i  IM i rlf  IT.T"  "  L  F 


in 

LO 


THE  YIEWS 

OF 

JIDGE  WOODWARD  AND  BISHOP  HOPKINS 


NEGRO  SLAVERY  AT  THE  SOUTH, 


ILLUSTRATED    FROM    THE 


JOURNAL  OF  A  RESIDENCE  ON  A  GEORGIAN 
PLANTATION, 

BY 

MRS.  FRANCES  ANNEkEMBLE, 

LJ  t 

(LATE  BUTLER.) 


A  True  Picture.    A  Photographic  View  of  a  Badly-whipped  Slave. 

•  The  next  objection  to  the  Slavery  of  the  Southern  States,  is  its  presumed  cruelty, 

because  the  refractory  slave  is  punished  with  corporeal  correction.     But  our 

Northern  law  allows  the  same  in  the  case  of  children  and  apprentices." 

"  The  Saviour  himself  used  a  scourge  of  small  cords  when  he  drove 

the  money-changers  from  the  Temple.     Are  our  modern 

philanthropists  more  merciful  than  Christ,  and  wiser 

than  the  Almighty?"  —  BISHOP  HOPKINS. 

(See  his  Letter  on  Slaver;/,  published  by 

the  Democratic  Statf,  Central 

Committee.) 


THE  Diary  from  which  the  following  extracts  are  taken,  was  kept 
in  the  winter  and  spring  of  1838-9,  on  an  estate  consisting  of  rice 
and  cotton  plantations,  in  the  islands  at  the  entrance  of  the  Alta- 
maha,  on  the  coast  of  Georgia.  The  narrative  is  in  the  form  of 
letters  written  by  Frances  Anne  Kemble  (then  Mrs.  Butler)  to  a 
friend  in  the  North. 

The  slaves  in  whom  she  then  had  an  unfortunate  interest,  were 
sold  some  years  ago.  The  islands  themselves  are  at  present  in  the 
power  of  the  Northern  troops.  The  record  contained  in  the  pages 
of  her  Journal  is  a  picture  of  conditions  of  human  existence  which 
it  is  hoped  and  believed  have  passed  away.  If  these  few  pages 
leave  any  one  in  doubt  as  to  the  moral,  social,  and  political  effects 
of  Southern  Slavery,  he  is  referred  to  the  Journal  itself,  as  recently 
published.  No  argument  will  reach  the  man  who  is  not  convinced 
by  this  "remarkable  revelation  of  the  interior  life  of  Slavery." 

The  following  narrative  is  divided  into  five  chapters,  under  con 
venient  titles,  with  head  quotations  from  the  extraordinary  speech 
of  Judge  Woodward,  and  still  more  extraordinary  letter  of  Bishop 
Hopkins,  as  published  and  distributed  by  the  Democratic  /State 
Central  Committee.  These  startling  views  of  the  Judge  and  the 
Bishop  are  best  met  by  the  record  of  Southern  Slavery  as  it  is, 
from  the  pen  of  a  Christian  woman,  who  had  unusual  means  of 
observation,  and  every  motive  to  soften  her  account  of  its  bar 
barities. 

< 


NEGRO  SLAVERY  AT  THE  SOUTH 

ILLUSTRATED. 


CHAPTER    I. 

THE    MORAL   LAW. 

"  THE  third  proof  that  Slavery  was  authorized  by  the  Almighty 
occurs  in  the  last  of  the  Ten  Commandments,  delivered  from  Mount 
Sinai,  and  universally  acknowledged  by  Jews  and  Christians  as 
'  The  Moral  Law,'  fc  Thou  shalt  not  covet  thy  neighbor's  house, 
thou  shalt  not  covet  thy  neighbor's  wife,  nor  his  man-servant,  nor 
his  maid-servant,  nor  his  ox,  nor  his  ass,  nor  anything  that  is  thy 
neighbor's.'  (Exod.  20  :  17.)  Here  it  is  evident  that  the  principle 
of  property, — '  anything  that  is  thy  neighbor's,' — runs  through  the 
whole.  I  am  quite  aware,  indeed,  of  the  prejudice  which  many  good 
people  entertain  against  the  idea  of  property  in  a  human  being, 
and  shall  consider  it  in  due  time  amongst  the  objections.  I  am 
equally  aware  that  the  wives  of  our  day  may  take  umbrage  at  the 
law,  which  places  them  in  the  same  sentence  with  the  slave,  and 
even  with  the  house  and  the  cattle.  But  the  truth  is  none  the  less 
certain." — BISHOP  HOPKINS'S  LETTER,  page  2. 

"  Human  bondage  and  property  in  man  is  divinely  sanctioned, 
if  not  ordained." — JUDGE  WOODWARD'S  SPEECH  of  DECEMBER 
13iH,  1860,  page  10,  of  Edition  of  Democratic  State  Central  Com 
mittee. 

(Extract  from  MRS.  KEMBLE'S  Journal.) 
THE  STORY  OF  PSYCHE,  A  SLAVE  WOMAN. 

MY  DEAREST  E : 

We  have  as  a  sort  of  under  nursemaid  and  assistant  of  my  dear  M , 

whose  white  complexion,  as  I  wrote  you,  occasioned  such  indignation  to 
my  Southern  fellow-travellers,  and  such  extreme  perplexity  to  the  poor 
slaves  on  our  arrival  here,  a  much  more  orthodox  servant  for  these  parts, 
a  young  woman  named  Psyche,  but  commonly  called  Sack,  not  a  very 
graceful  abbreviation  of  the  divine  heathen  appellation.  She  cannot  be 
much  over  twenty,  has  a  very  pretty  figure,  a  graceful,  gentle  deportment, 
and  a  face  which,  but  for  its  color  (she  is  a  dingy  mulatto),  would  be 
pretty,  and  is  extremely  pleasing,  from  the  perfect  sweetness  of  its  ex 
pression.  She  is  always  serious,  not  to  say  sad  and  silent,  and  has  always 


an  air  of  melancholy  and  timidity,  that  has  frequently  struck  me  very 
much,  and  would  have  made  me  think  some  special  anxiety  or  sorrow  must 
occasion  it,  but  that  God  knows  the  whole  condition  of  these  wretched 
people  naturally  produces  such  a  deportment,  and  there  is  no  necessity  to 
seek  for  special  or  peculiar  causes  to  account  for  it.  Just  in  proportion  as 
I  have  found  the  slaves  on  this  plantation  intelligent  and  advanced  beyond 
the  general  brutish  level  of  the  majority,  I  have  observed  this  pathetic  ex 
pression  of  countenance  in  them,  a  mixture  of  sadness  and  fear,  the  in 
voluntary  exhibition  of  the  two  feelings,  which  I  suppose  must  be  the 
predominant  experience  of  their  whole  lives,  regret  and  apprehension,  not 
the  less  heavy,  either  of  them,  for  beiug,  in  some  degree,  vague  and  inde 
finite, — a  sense  of  incalculable  past  loss  and  injury,  and  a  dread  of  incalcu 
lable  future  loss  and  injury. 

I  have  never  questioned  Psyche  as  to  her  sadness,  because  in  the  first 
place,  as  I  tell  you,  it  appears  to  me  most  natural,  and  is  observable  in  all 
the  slaves  whose  superior  natural  or  acquired  intelligence  allows  of  their 
filling  situations  of  trust  or  service  about  the  house  and  family  j  and 
though  I  cannot  and  will  not  refuse  to  hear  any  and  every  tale  of  suffering 
which  these  unfortunates  bring  to  me,  I  am  anxious  to  spare  both  myself 
and  them  the  pain  of  vain  appeals  to  me  for  redress  and  help,  which,  alas  ! 
\  it  is  too  often  utterly  out  of  my  power  to  give  them.  It  is  useless,  and 
indeed,  worse  than  useless,  that  they  should  see  my  impotent  indignation 
and  unavailing  pity,  and  hear  expressions  of  compassion  for  them,  and 
horror  at  their  condition,  which  might  only  prove  incentives  to  a  hopeless 
resistance  on  their  part  to  a  system,  under  the  hideous  weight  of  whose 
oppression  any  individual  or  partial  revolt  must  be  annihilated  and  ground 
into  the  dust.  Therefore,  as  I  tell  you,  I  asked  Psyche  no  questions,  but 

to  my  great  astonishment,  the  other  day  M asked  me  if  I  knew  to 

*  whom  Psyche  belonged,  as  the  poor  woman  had  inquired  of  her  with  much 
hesitation  and  anguish,  if  she  could  tell  her  who  owned  her  and  her  chil 
dren.  She  has  two  nice  little  children  under  six  years  old,  whom  she  keeps 
as  clean  and  tidy,  and  who  are  sad  and  as  silent  as  herself.  My  astonish 
ment  at  this  question  was,  as  you  will  readily  believe,  not  small,  and  I 
forthwith  sought  out  Psyche  for  an  explanation.  She  was  thrown  into 
extreme  perturbation  at  finding  that  her  question  had  been  referred  to  me, 
and  it  was  some  time  before  I  could  sufficiently  reassure  her  to  be  able  to 
comprehend,  in  the  midst  of  her  reiterated  entreaties  for  pardon,  and  hopes 
that  she  had  not  offended- me,  that  she  did  not  know  herself  who  owned 
her.  She  was,  at  one  time,  the  property  of  Mr.  K ,  the  former  over 
seer,  of  whom  I  have  already  spoken  to  you,  and  who  has  just  been  paying 

Mr.  a  visit.    He,  like  several  of  his  predecessors  in  the  management, 

has  contrived  to  make  a  fortune  upon  it  (though  it  yearly  decreases  in 
value  to  the  owners,  but  this  is  the  inevitable  course  of  things  in  the  South- 


ern  States),  and  has  purchased  a  plantation  of  his  own  in  Alabama,  I  be 
lieve,  or  one  of  the  Southwestern  States.  Whether  she  still  belonged  to 

Mr.  K or  not  she  did  not  know,  and  entreated  me,  if  she  did,  to 

endeavor  to  persuade  Mr.  to  buy  her.     Now  you   must  know  that 

this  poor  woman  is  the  wife  of  one  of  Mr.  B 's  slaves,  a  fine,  intelli 
gent,  active,  excellent  young  man,  whose  whole  family  are  among  some  of 
the  very  best  specimens  of  character  and  capacity  on  the  estate.  I  was  so 
astonished  at  the  (to  me)  extraordinary  state  of  things  revealed  by  poor 
Sack's  petition,  that  I  could  only  tell  her  that  I  had  supposed  all  the 
negroes  on  the  plantation  were  Mr.  's  property,  but  that  I  would  cer 
tainly  inquire,  and  find  out  for  her,  if  I  could,  to  whom  she  belonged,  and 

if  I  could,  endeavor  to  get  Mr.  to  purchase  her,  if  she  really  was 

not  his. 

Now  E- ,  just  conceive  for  one  moment  the  state  of  mind  of  this 

woman,  believing  herself  to  belong  to  a  man  who  in  a  few  days  was  going 
down  to  one  of  those  abhorred  and  dreaded  Southwestern  States,  and  who 
would  then  compel  her,  with  her  poor  little  children,  to  leave  her  husband 
and  the  only  home  she  had  ever  known,  and  all  the  ties  of  affection,  rela 
tionship,  and  association  of  her  former  life,  to  follow  him  thither,  in  all 
human  probability  never  again  to  behold  any  living  creature  that  she  had 
seen  before ;  and  this  was  so  completely  a  matter  of  course  that  it  was  not 
even  thought  necessary  to  apprise  her  positively  of  the  fact,  and  the  only 
thing  that  interposed  between  her  and  this  most  miserable  fate  was  the 

faint  hope  that  Mr.  might  have  purchased  her  and  her  children. 

But  if  he  had,  if  this  great  deliverance  had  been  vouchsafed  to  her,  the 
knowledge  of  it  was  not  thought  necessary;  and  with  this  deadly  dread  at 
her  heart,  she  was  living  day  after  day,  waiting  upon  me  and  seeing  me, 
with  my  husband  beside  me,  and  my  children  in  my  arms  in  blessed  secu 
rity,  safe  from  all  separation  but  the  one  reserved  in  God's  great  providence 
for  all  his  creatures.  Do  you  think  I  wondered  any  more  at  the  woe-begone 
expression  of  her  countenance,  or  do  you  think  it  was  easy  for  me  to 
restrain  within  prudent  and  proper  limits  the  expression  of  my  feelings  at 
such  a  state  of  things  ?  And  she  had  gone  on  from  day  to  day  enduring 

this  agony,  till  I  suppose  its  own  intolerable  pressure  and  M 's  sweet 

countenance  and  gentle  sympathizing  voice  and  manner  had  constrained 
her  to  lay  down  this  great  burden  of  sorrow  at  our  feet.  I  did  not  see 

Mr. until  the  evening;  but  in  the  meantime  meeting  Mr.  0 , 

the  overseer,  with  whom,  as  I  believe  I  have  already  told  you,  we  are 
living  here,  I  asked  him  about  Psyche,  and  who  was  her  proprietor,  when, 
to  my  infinite  surprise,  he  told  me  that  he  had  bought  her  and  her  children 

from  Mr.  K ,  who  had  offered   them  to  him,  saying  that  they  would 

be  rather  troublesome  to  him  than  otherwise  down  where  he  was  going; 
"and  so/'  said  Mr.  0 ,  "as  I  had  no  objection  to  investing  a  little 


6 

money  that  way,  I  bought  them."  With  a  heart  much  lightened,  I  flew 
to  tell  poor  Psyche  the  news,  so  that,  at  any  rate,  she  might  be  relieved 
from  the  dread  of  any  immediate  separation  from  her  husband.  You  can 
imagine  better  than  I  can  tell  you  what  her  sensations  were ;  but  she  still 

renewed  her  prayer  that  I  would,  if  possible,  induce  Mr.  to  purchase 

her,  and  I  promised  to  do  so. 

Early  the  next  morning,  while  I  was  still  dressing,  I  was  suddenly 

startled  by  hearing  voices  in  loud  tones  in  Mr. 's  dressing-room,  which 

adjoins  my  bedroom,  and  the  noise  increasing  until  there  was  an  absolute 
cry  of  despair  uttered  by  some  man.  I  could  restrain  myself  no  longer, 
but  opened  the  door  of  communication  and  saw  Joe,  the  young  man,  poor 
Psyche's  husband,  raving  almost  in  a  state  of  frenzy,  and  in  a  voice  broken 
with  sobs  and  almost  inarticulate  with  passion,  reiterating  his  determination 
never  to  leave  this  plantation,  never  to  go  to  Alabama,  never  to  leave  his 
old  father  and  mother,  his  poor  wife  and  children,  and  dashing  his  hat, 
which  he  was  wringing  like  a  cloth  in  his  hands,  upon  the  ground,  he 

declared  he  would  kill  himself  if  he  was  compelled  to  follow  Mr.  K . 

I  glanced  from  the  poor  wretch  to  Mr.  ,  who  was  standing,  leaning 

against  a  table  with  his  arms  folded,  occasionally  uttering  a  few  words  of 
counsel  to  his  slave  to  be  quiet  and  not  fret,  and  not  make  a  fuss  about 
what  there  was  no  help  for.  I  retreated  immediately  from  the  horrid 
scene,  breathless  with  surprise  and  dismay,  and  stood  for  some  time  in  my 
own  room,  with  my  heart  and  temples  throbbing  to  such  a  degree  that  I 
could  hardly  support  myself.  As  soon  as  I  recovered  myself  I  again 

sought  Mr.  0 ,  and  inquired  of  him  if  he  knew  the  cause  of  poor 

Joe's  distress.  He  then  told  me  that  Mr.  ,  who  is  highly  pleased 

with  Mr.  K 's  past  administration  of  his  property,  wished,  on  his 

departure  for  his  newly-acquired  slave  plantation,  to  give  him  some  token 
of  his  satisfaction,  and  had  made  him  a  present  of  the  man  Joe,  who  had 
just  received  the  intelligence  that  he  was, to  go  down  to  Alabama  with  his 
new  owner  the  next  day,  leaving  father,  mother,  wife,  and  children  behind. 
You  will  not  wonder  that  the  man  required  a  little  judicious  soothing 
under  such  circumstances,  and  you  will  also,  I  hope,  admire  the  humanity 
of  the  sale  of  his  wife  and  children  by  the  owner  who  was  going  to  take 
him  to  Alabama,  because  they  would  be  incumbrances  rather  than  other 
wise  down  there.  If  Mr.  K did  not  do  this  after  he  knew  that  the 

man  was  his,  then  Mr. gave  him  to  be  carried  down  to  the  South 

after  his  wife  and  children  were  sold  to  remain  in  Georgia.  I  do  not 
know  which  was  the  real  transaction,  for  I  have  not  had  the  heart  to  ask; 
but  you  will  easily  imagine  which  of  the  two  cases  I  prefer  believing. 

When  I  saw  Mr. after  this  most  wretched  story 'became  known  to 

me  in  all  its  details,  I  appealed  to  him,  for  his  own  soul's  sake,  not  to 
commit  so  great  a  cruelty.  Poor  Joe's  agony  while  remonstrating  with 


his  master  was  hardly  greater  than  mine  while  arguing  with  him  upon  this 
bitter  piece  of  inhumanity — how  I  cried,  and  how  1  adjured,  and  how  all 
my  sense  of  justice,  and  of  mercy,  and  of  pity  for  the  poor  wretch,  and  of 
wretchedness  at  finding  myself  implicated  in  such  a  state  of  things,  broke 
in  torrents  of  words  from  my  lips  and  tears  from  my  eyes !  God  knows 
such  a  sorrow  at  seeing  any  one  I  belonged  to  commit  such  an  act  was 
indeed  a  new  and  terrible  experience  to  me,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  I 

was  imploring  Mr. to  save  himself  more  than  to  spare  these  wretches. 

He  gave  me  no  answer  whatever,  and  I  have  since  thought  that  the 
intemperate  vehemence  of  my  entreaties  and  expostulations  perhaps  de 
served  that  he  should  leave  me  as  he  did  without  one  single  word  of  re 
ply  j  and  miserable  enough  I  remained.  Toward  evening,  as  I  was  sitting 

alone,  my  children  having  gone  to  bed,  Mr.  0 came   into  the   room. 

I  had  but  one  subject  in  my  mind  j  I  had  not  been  able  to  eat  for  it.  I 
could  hardly  sit  still  for  the  nervous  distress  which  every  thought  of  these 
poor  people  filled  me  with.  As  he  sat  down  looking  over  some  accounts,  I 

saW  to  him,  "  Have  you  seen  Joe  this  afternoon,  Mr.  0 ?"     (I  give 

you  our  conversation  as  it  took  place.)  "  Yes,  ma'am ;  he  is  a  great  deal 
happier  than  he  was  this  morning."  "Why,  how  is  that?"  asked  I, 

eagerly.     "  Oh,  he  is  not  going  to  Alabama.     Mr.  K heard  that  he 

had  kicked  up  a  fuss  about  it  (being  in  despair  at  being  torn  from  one's 
wife  and  children  is  called  Jacking  up  a  fuss;  this  is  a  sample  of  overseer 
appreciation  of  human  feelings),  and  said  that  if  the  fellow  wasn't  willing 
to  go  with  him,  he  did  not  wish  to  be  bothered  with  any  niggers  down 
there  who  were  to  be  troublesome,  so  he  might  stay  behind."  "  And  does 
Psyche  know  this  ?"  "  Yes,  ma'am,  I  suppose  so."  I  drew  a  long 
breath ;  and  whereas  my  needle  had  stumbled  through  the  stuff  I  was 
sewing  for  an  hour  before,  as  .if  my  fingers  could  not  guide  it,  the 
regularity  and  rapidity  of  its  evolutions  were  now  quite  edifying.  The 
man  was  for  the  present  safe,  and  I  remained  silently  pondering  his  de 
liverance  and  the  whole  proceeding,  and  the  conduct  of  every  one  engaged 

in  it,  and,  above  all,  Mr. 's  share  in  the  transaction,  and  I  think,  for 

the  first  time,  almost  a  sense  of  horrible  personal  responsibility  arid  impli 
cation  took  hold  of  my  mind,  and  I  felt  the  weight  of  an  unimagined 
guilt  upon  my  conscience;  and  yet,  God  knows,  this  feeling  of  self- 
condemnation  is  very  gratuitous  on  my  part,  since  when  I  married 

Mr. I  knew  nothing  of  these  dreadful  possessions  of  his,  and  even 

if  I  had  I  should  have  been  much  puzzled  to  have  formed  any  idea  of  the 
state  of  things  in  which  I  now  find  myself  plunged,  together  with  those 
whose  well-doing  is  as  vital  to  me  almost  as  my  own. 

With  these   agreeable  reflections  I  went  to  bed.     Mr. said  not  a 

word  to  me  upon  the  subject  of  these  poor  people  all  the  next  day,  and  in 
the  mean  time  I  became  very  impatient  of  this  reserve  on  his  part,  because 


8 

I  was  dying  to  prefer  my  request  that  he  would  purchase  Psyche  and  her 
children,  and  so  prevent  any  future  separation  between  her  and  her  hus 
band,  as  I  supposed  he  would  not  again  attempt  to  make  a  present  of  Joe, 
at  least  to  any  one  who  did  not  wish  to  be  bothered  with  his  wife  and 

children.      In  the  evening  I  was  again  with  Mr.   0 alone  in  the 

strange,  bare,  wooden-walled  sort  of  shanty  which  is  our  sitting-room,  and 
revolving  in  my  mind  the  means  of  rescuing  Psyche  from  her  miserable 
suspense,  a  long  chain  of  all  my  possessions,  in  the  shape  of  bracelets, 
necklaces,  brooches,  earrings,  etc.,  wound  in  glittering  procession  through 
my  brain,  with  many  hypothetical  calculations  of  the  value  of  each 
separate  ornament,  and  the  very  doubtful  probability  of  the  amount  of  the 
whole  being  equal  to  the  price  of  this  poor  creature  and  her  children ;  and 
then  the  great  power  and  privilege  I  had  foregone  of  earning  money  by  my 
own  labor  occurred  to  me,  and  I  think,  for  the  first  time  in  my  life,  my 
past  profession  assumed  an  aspect  that  arrested  my  thoughts  most  seriously. 
•  For  the  last  four  years  of  my  life  that  preceded  my  marriage  I  literally 
coined  money,  and  never  until  this  moment,  I  think,  did  I  reflect  on*  the 
great  means  of  good,  to  myself  and  others,  that  I  so  gladly  agreed  to  give 
up  forever  for  a  maintenance  by  the  unpaid  labor  of  slaves — people  toiling 
not  only  unpaid,  but  under  the  bitter  conditions  the  bare  contemplation  of 
which  was  then  wringing  my  heart.  You  will  not  wonder  that  when,  in 

the  midst  of  such   cogitations,  I  suddenly  accosted  Mr.  0 ,  it  was  to 

this    effect:    "Mr.  0 ,  I  have    a   particular    favor   to    beg   of  you. 

Promise  me  that  you  will  never  sell  Psyche  and  her  children  without  first 
letting  me  know  of  your  intention  to  do  so,  and  giving  me  the  option  of 

buying  them."     Mr.  0 is  a  remarkably  deliberate  man,  and  squints, 

so  that,  when  he  has  taken  a  little  time  in  directing  his  eyes  to  you,  you 
are  still  unpleasantly  unaware  of  any  result  in  which  you  are  concerned. 
He  laid  down  a  book  he  was  reading,  and  directed  his  head  and  one  of  his 
eyes  toward  me  and  answered,  "Dear  me,  ma'am,  I  am  very  sorry — I  have 
sold  them."  My  work  fell  down  on  the  ground,  and  my  mouth  opened 
wide,  but  I  could  utter  no  sound,  I  was  so  dismayed  and  surprised ;  and 
he  deliberately  proceeded  :  "  I  didn't  know,  ma'am,  you  see,  at  all,  that 
you  entertained  any  idea  of  making  an  investment  of  that  nature  ;  for  I'm 
sure,  if  I  had,  I  would  willingly  have  sold  the  woman  to  you ;  but  I  sold 

her  and- her  children  this  morning  to  Mr. ."     My  dear  E ,  though 

had  resented  my  unmeasured  upbraidings,  you  see  they  had  not  been 

without  some  good  effect,  and  though  he  had,  perhaps  justly,  punished  my 
violent  outbreak  of  indignation  about  the  miserable  scene  I  had  witnessed 
by  not  telling  me  of  his  humane  purpose,  he  had  bought  these  poor 
creatures,  and  so,  I  trust,  secured  them  from  any  such  misery  in  future.  I 

jumped  up  and  left  Mr.  0 still  speaking,  and  ran  to  find  Mr. , 

to  thank  him  for  what  he  had  done,  and  with  that  will  now  bid  you  good- 


9 

by.     Think,  E ,  how  it  fares  with  slaves  on  plantations  where  there  is 

no  crazy  Englishwoman  to  weep,  and  entreat,  and  implore,  and  upbraid  for 
them,  and  no  master  willing  to  listen  to  such  appeals. 


CHAPTER    II. 

THE    GOLDEN   RULE. 

"  Therefore,  all  things  whatsoever  ye  would  that  men  should 
do  to  you,  do  ye  even  so  to  them  ;  for  this  is  the  law  and  the 
prophets." — MATTHEW  7  :  12. 

"  We  consign  them  (the  slaves)  to  no  heathen  thrall,  but  to 
Christian  men,  professing  the  same  faith  with  us,  speaking  the  same 
language,  reading  the  golden  rule,  in  no  one-sided  and  distorted 
shape,  but  as  it  is  recorded — a  rule  to  slaves,  as  well  as  to 
masters." — JUDGE  WOODWARD'S  SPEECH  OF  DECEMBER  13TH, 
1860,  page  10,  Democratic  Edition. 

"It  is  said  by  some,  however,  that  the  great  principle  of  the 
Gospel,  love  to  God  and  love  to  man,  necessarily  involved  the  con 
demnation  of  Slavery.  Yet  how  should  it  have  any  such  result, 
when  we  remember  that  this  was  no  new  principle,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  was  laid  down  by  the  Deity  to  his  own'  chosen  people, 
and  was  quoted  from  the  Old  Testament  by  the  Savior  himself? 
and  why  should  Slavery  be  thought  inconsistent  with  it  ?  In  the 
relation  of  master  and  slave,  we  are  assured  by  our  Southern 
brethren  that  there  is  incomparably  more  mutual  love  than  ever 
can  be  found  between  the  employer  and  the  hireling." — BISHOP 
HOPKINS'S  LETTER,  page  4,  Democratic  Edition. 

Slavery  never  appeared  so  hateful,  nor  slaveholders  so  vulgar 
and  brutal,  as  in  the  following  extracts,  where  a  woman  tells  the 
world  what  the  black  women  of  the  South  have  so  long  endured. 

(Extracts  from  MRS.  KEMBLE'S  Journal.) 

MY  DEAR  E : 

Before  closing  this  letter,  I  have  a  mind  to  transcribe  to  you  the 
entries  for  to-day  recorded  in  a  sort  of  day-book,  where  I  put  down  very 
succinctly  the  number  of  people  who  visit  me,  their  petitions  and  ail 
ments,  and  also  such  special  particulars  concerning  them  as  seem  to  me 
worth  recording.  You  will  see  how  miserable  the  physical  condition  of 


10 

many  of  these  poor  creatures  is ;  and  their  physical  condition,  it  is  insisted 
by  those  who  uphold  this  evil  system,  is  the  only  part  of  it  which  is  pros 
perous,  happy,  and  compares  well  with  that  of  Northern  laborers.  Judge 
from  the  details  I  now  send  you  ;  and  never  forget,  while  reading  them, 
that  the  people  on  this  plantation  are  well  off,  and  consider  themselves 
well  off,  in  comparison  with  the  slaves  on  some  of  the  neighboring  estates. 

Fanny  has  had  six  children  ;  all  dead  but  one.  She  came  to  beg  to 
have  her  work  in  the  field  lightened. 

Nanny  has  had  three  children  j  two  of  them  are  dead.  She  came  to 
implore  that  the  rule  of  sending  them  into  the  field  three  weeks  after  their 
confinement  might  be  altered. 

Leah,  Caesar's  wife  has  had  six  children  •  three  are  dead. 

Sophy,  Lewis's  wife,  came  to  beg  for  some  old  linen.  She  is  suffering 
fearfully;  has  had  ten  children;  five  of  them  are  dead.  The  principal 
favor  she  asked  was  a  piece  of  meat,  which  I  gave  her. 

Sally,  Scipio's  wife  has  had  two  miscarriages  and  three  children  born,  one 
of  whom  is  dead.  She  came  complaining  of  incessant  pain  and  weakness 
in  her  back.  This  woman  was  a  mulatto  daughter  of  a  slave  called  Sophy, 
by  a  white  man  of  the  name  of  Walker,  who  visited  the  plantation. 

Charlotte,  Renty's  wife,  had  had  two  miscarriages,  and  was  with  child 
again.  She  was  almost  crippled  with  rheumatism,  and  showed  me  a  pair 
of  poor  swollen  knees  that  made  my  heart  ache.  I  have  promised  her  a 
pair  of  flannel  trowsers,  which  I  must  forthwith  set  about  making. 

Sarah,  Stephen's  wife — this  woman's  case  and  history  were  alike  deplo 
rable.  She  had  .had  four  miscarriages,  had  brought  seven  children  into 
the  world,  five  of  whom  were  dead,  and  was  again  with  child.  She  com 
plained  of  dreadful  pains  in  the  back,  and  an  internal  tumor  which  swells 
with  the  exertion  of  working  in  the  fields ;  probably,  I  think,  she  is  rup 
tured.  She  told  me  she  had  once  been  mad  and  had  ran  into  the  woods, 
where  she  contrived  to  elude  discovery  for  some  time,  but  was  at  last 
tracked  and  brought  back,  when  she  was  tied  up  by  the  arms,  and  heavy 
logs  fastened  to  her  feet,  and  was  severely  flogged.  After  this  she 
contrived  to  escape  again,  and  lived  for  some  time  skulking  in  the 
woods,  and  she  supposes  mad,  for  when  she  was  taken  again  she  was  en 
tirely  naked.  She  subsequently  recovered  from  this  derangement,  and 
seems  now  just  like  all  the  other  poor  creatures  who  come  to  me  for  help 
and  pity.  I  suppose  her  constant  childbearingand  hard  labor  in  the  fields 
at  the  same  time  may  have  produced  the  temporary  insanity. 

Suhey,  Bush's  wife,  only  came  to  pay  her  respects.  She  had  had  four 
miscarriages ;  had  brought  eleven  children  into  the  world,  five  of  whom 
are  dead. 

Molly,  Quambo's  wife,  also  only  came  to  see  me.     Hers  was  the  best 


11 

account  I  have  yet  received ;  she  had  had  nine  children,  and  six  of  them 
were  still  alive. 

This  is  only  the  entry  for  to-day,  in  my  diary,  of  the  people's  complaints 
and  visits.  Can  you  conceive  a  more  wretched  picture  than  that  which 
it  exhibits  of  the  conditions  under  which  these  women  live  ?  Their  cases 
are  in  no  respect  singular,  and  though  they  come  with  pitiful  entreaties 
that  I  will  help  them  with  some  alleviation  of  their  pressing  physical  dis 
tresses  it  seems  to  me  marvellous  with  what  desperate  patience  (I  write  it  ad 
visedly),  patience  of  utter  despair,  they  endure  their  sorrow-laden  existence. 
Even  the  poor  wretch  who  told  that  miserable  story  of  insanity,  and 
lonely  hidings  in  the  swamp,  and  scourging  when  she  was  found,  and  of 
her  renewed  madness  and  flight,  did  so  in  a  sort  of  low  plaintive  monotonous 
murmur  of  misery,  as  if  such  sufferings  were  "all  in  the  day's  work." 

T  ask  these  questions  about  their  children/*because  I  think  the  number 
they  bear  as  compared  with  the  number  they  rear  a  fair  gauge  of  the  effect 
of  the  system  on  their  own  health  and  that  of  their  offspring.  There  was 
hardly  one  of  these  women,  as  you  will  see  by  the  details  I  have  noted  of 
their  ailments,  who  might  not  have  been  a  candidate  for  a  bed  in  a  hospi 
tal,  and  they  had  come  to  me  after  working  all  day  in  the  fields. 


DEAR  E : 

This  morning  I  paid  my  second  visit  to  the  Infirmary,  and  found  there 
had  been  some  faint  attempt  at  sweeping  and  cleaning,  in  compliance  with 
my  entreaties.  The  poor  woman  Harriet,  however,  whose  statement  with 
regard  to  the  impossibility  of  their  attending  properly  to  their  children  had 
been  so  vehemently  denied  by  the  overseer,  was  crying  bitterly.  I  asked 
her  what  ailed  her,  when,  more  by  signs  and  dumbshow  than  words,  she 

and  old  Hose  informed  me  that  Mr.  0 had  flogged  her  that  morning 

for  having  told  me  that  the  women  had  not  time  to  keep  their  children 
clean.  It  is  part  of  the  regular  duty  of  every  overseer  to  visit  the  In 
firmary  at  least  once  a  day,  which  he  generally  does  in  the  morning,  and 

Mr.  0 -'s  visit  had  preceded  mine  but  a  short  time  only,  or  I  might 

have  been  edified  by  seeing  a  man  horsewhip  a  woman.  I  again  and  again 
made  her  repeat  her  story,  and  she  again  and  again  affirmed  that  she  had 
been  flogged  for  what  she  told  me,  none  of  the  whole  company  in  the  room 
denying  it  or  contradicting  her.  I  left  the  room,  because  I  was  so  dis 
gusted  and  indignant  that  I  could  hardly  restrain  my  feelings,  and  to  ex 
press  them  could  have  produced  no  single  good  result. 

Mr.  was  called  out  this  evening  to  listen  to  a  complaint  of  over 
work  from  a  gang  of  pregnant  women.  I  did  not  stay  to  listen  to  the  de 
tails  of  their  petition,  for  I  am  unable  to  command  myself  on  such  occa 
sions,  and  Mr.  seemed  positively  degraded  in  my  eyes  as  he  stood 


12 

enforcing  upon  these  women  the  necessity  of  their  fulfilling  their  appointed 
tasks.  How  honorable  he  would  have  appeared  to  me  begrimed  with  the 
sweat  and  toil  of  the  coarsest  manual  labor,  to  what  he  then  seemed,  setting 
forth  to  these  wretched,  ignorant  women,  as  a  duty,  their  unpaid  exacted 
labor !  I  turned  away  in  bitter  disgust.  I  hope  this  sojourn  among 

Mr.  's  slaves  may  not  lessen  my  respect  for  him,  but  I  fear  it;  for 

the  details  of  slaveholding  are  so  unmanly,  letting  alone  every  other  con 
sideration,  that  I  know  not  how  any  one  with  the  spirit  of  a  man  can  con 
descend  to  them. 

This  morning  I  had  a  visit  from  two  of  the  women,  Charlotte  and  Judy, 
who  came  to  me  for  help  and  advice  for  a  complaint,  which  it  really  seems 
to  me  every  other  woman  on  the  estate  is  cursed  with,  and  which  is  a 
direct  result  of  the  conditions  of  their  existence.  The  practice  of  sending 
women  to  labor  in  the  fielcfe  in  the  third  week  after  their  confinement  is  a 
specific  for  causing  this  infirmity,  and  I  know  no  specific  for  curing  it 
under  these  circumstances.  As  soon  as  these  poor  things  had  departed 
with  such  comfort  as  I  could  give  them,  and  the  bandages  they  especially 
begged  for,  three  other  sable  graces  introduced  themselves,  Edie,  Louisa, 
and  Diana;  the  former  told  me  she  had  had  a  family  of  seven  children, 
but  had  lost  them  all  through  "ill  luck,"  as  she  denominated  the  ignorance 
and  ill  treatment  which  were  answerable  for  the  loss  of  these,  as  of  so  many 
other  poor  little  creatures,  their  fellows.  Having  dismissed  her  and  Diana 
•with  the  sugar  and  rice  they  came  to  beg,  I  detained  Louisa,  whom  I  had 
never  seen  but  in  the  presence  of  her  old  grandmother,  whose  version  of 
the  poor  child's  escape  to,  and  hiding  in  the  woods,  I  had  a  desire  to  com 
pare  with  the  heroine's  own  story.  She  told  it  very  simply,  and  it  was 
most  pathetic.  She  had  not  finished  her  task  one  day,  when  she  said  she 
felt  ill,  and  unable  to  do  so,  and  had  been  severely  flogged  by  Driver  Bran, 
in  whose  "gang"  she  then  was.  The  next  day,  in  spite  of  this  encourage 
ment  to  labor,  she  had  again  been  unable  to  complete  her  appointed  work; 
and  Bran  having  told  her  that  he'd  tie  her  up  and  flog  her  if  she  did  not 
get  it  done,  she  had  left  the  field  and  run  into  the  swamp.  "  Tie  you  up, 
Louisa!"  said  I;  "what  is  that?"  She  then  described  to  me  that  they 
were  fastened  up  by  their  wrists  to  a  beam  or  a  branch  of  a  tree,  their  feet 
barely  touching  the  ground,  so  as  to  allow  them  no  purchase  for  resistance 
or  evasion  of  the  lash,  their  clothes  turned  over  their  heads,  and  their 
backs  scored  with  a  leather  thong,  either  by  the  driver  himself,  or,  if  he 
pleases  to  inflict  their  punishment  by  deputy,  any  of  the  men  he  may 
choose  to  summon  to  the  office;  it  might  be  father,  brother,  husband,  or 
lover,  if  the  overseer  so  ordered  it.  I  turned  sick,  and  my  blood  curdled 
listening  to  these  details  from  the  slender  young  slip  of  a  lassie,  with  her 
poor  piteous  face  and  murmuring,  pleading  voice.  "Oh,"  said  I,  "Louisa; 
but  the  rattlesnakes — the  dreadful  rattlesnakes  in  the  swamps;  were  you 


13 

not  afraid  of  those  horrible  creatures?''  "Oh,  missis/'  said  the  poor  child, 
"me  no  tink  of  dem ;  me  forget  all  'bout  dem  for  de  fretting."  "Why 
did  you  come  home  at  last?"  "Oh,  missis,  me  starve  with  hunger,  me 
most  dead  with  hunger  before  me  come  back."  "  And  were  you  flogged, 
Louisa?"  said  T,  with  a  shudder  at  what  the  answer  might  be.  "No, 
missis,  me  go  to  hospital  •  me  almost  dead  and  sick  so  long,  'spec  Driver 
Bran  him  forgot  'bout  de  flogging."  I  am  getting  perfectly  savage  over 

all  these  doings,  E ,  and  really  think  I  should  consider  my  own  throat 

arid  those  of  my  children  well  cut  if  some  night  the  people  were  to  take  it 
into  their  heads  to  clear  off  scores  in  that  fashion. 

Returning  from  the  hospital,  I  was  accosted  by  poor  old  Teresa,  the 
wretched  negress  who  had  complained  to  me  so  grievously  of  her  back 
being  broken  by  hard  work  and  childbearing.  She  was  in  a  dreadful  state 
of  excitement,  which  she  partly  presently  communicated  to  me,  because 

she  said  Mr.  0 had  ordered  her  to  be  flogged  for  having  complained 

to  me  as  she  did.  It  seems  to  rue  that  I  have  come  down  here  to  be  tor 
tured,  for  this  punishing  these  wretched  creatures  for  crying  out  to  me  for 
help  is  really  converting  me  into  a  source  of  increased  misery  to  them.  It 
is  almost  more  than  I  can  endure  to  hear  these  horrid  stories  of  lashings 

inflicted  because  I  have  been  invoked ;  and  though  I  dare  say  Mr. , 

thanks  to  my  passionate  appeals  to  him,  gives  me  little  credit  for  prudence 
or  self-command,  I  have  some,  and  I  exercise  it,  too,  when  I  listen  to  such 
tales  as  these  with  my  teeth  set  fast  and  my  lips  closed.  Whatever  I 
may  do  to  the  master,  I  hold  my  tongue  to  the  slaves,  and  I  wonder  how 
I  do  it. 

On  my  return  to  our  own  island,  I  visited  another  of  the  hospitals,  and 
the  settlements  to  which  it  belonged.  The  condition  of  these  places  and 
of  their  inhabitants  is,  of  course,  the  same  all  over  the  plantation,  and  if  I 
were  to  describe  them  I  should  but  weary  you  with  a  repetition  of  identical 
phenomena;  filthy,  wretched,  almost  naked,  always  barelegged  and  bare 
footed  children  ;  negligent,  ignorant,  wretched  mothers,  whose  apparent 
indifference  to  the  plight  of  their  offspring,  and  utter  incapacity  to  alter  it, 
are  the  inevitable  result  of  their  slavery.  It  is  hopeless  to  attempt  to  re 
form  their  habits  or  improve  their  condition  while  the  women  are  con 
demned  to  field  labor;  nor  is  it  possible  to  over-estimate  the  bad  moral 
effect  of  the  system  as  regards  the  women  entailing  this  enforced  separation 
from  their  children,  and  neglect  of  all  the  cares  and  duties  of  mother, 
nurse,  and  even  housewife,  which  are  all  merged  in  the  mere  physical  toil 
of  a  human  hoeing  machine.  It  seems  to  me  too — but  upon  this  point  I 
can  not,  of  course,  judge  as  well  as  the  persons  accustomed  to  and 
acquainted  with  the  physical  capacities  of  their  slaves — that  the  labor  is 
not  judiciously  distributed  in  many  cases — at  least  not  as  far  as  the  women 
are  concerned.  It  is  true  that  every  able-bodied  woman  is  made  the  most 


14 

of,  in  being  driven  afield  as  long  as,  under  all  and  any  circumstances,  she 
is  able  to  wield  a  hoe ;  but,  on  the  ether  hand,  stout,  hale,  hearty  girls 
and  boys,  of  from  eight  to  twelve,  and  older,  are  allowed  to  lounge  about, 
filthy  and  idle,  with  no  pretence  of  an  occupation  but  what  they  call 
"  tend  baby,"  i.  e.,  see  to  the  life  and  limbs  of  the  little  slave  infants,  to 
whose  mothers,  working  in  distant  fields,  they  carry  them  during  the  day 
to  be  suckled,  and  for  the  rest  of  the  time  leave  them  to  crawl  and  kick 
in  the  filthy  cabins  or  on  the  broiling  sand  which  surrounds  them,  in 
which  industry,  excellent  enough  for  the  poor  babies,  these  big  lazy  youths 
and  lasses  emulate  them.  Again,  I  find  many  women  who  have  borne 
from  five  to  ten  children,  rated  as  workers,  precisely  as  young  women  in 
the  prime  of  their  strength  who  have  had  none ;  this  seems  a  cruel  care 
lessness.  To  be  sure,  while  the  women  are  pregnant  their  task  is  dimin 
ished,  and  this  is  one  of  the  many  indirect  inducements  held  out  to 
reckless  propagation,  which  has  a  sort  of  premium  offered  to  it  in  the  con 
sideration  of  less  work  and  more  food,  counterbalanced  by  none  of  the 
sacred  responsibilities  which  hallow  and  ennoble  the  relation  of  parent  and 
child ;  iu  short,  as  their  lives  are  for  the  most  part  those  of  mere  animals, 
their  increase  is  literally  mere  animal  breeding,  to  which  every  encourage 
ment  is  given,  for  it  adds  to  the  master's  live-stock  and  the  value  of  his 
estate. 


CHAPTER    III. 

AN    INCALCULABLE   BLESSING. 

"  Here  we  see  that  the  separation  of  husband  and  wife  is  posi 
tively  directed  by  the  divine  command,  in  order  to  secure  the  pro 
perty  of  the  master  in  his  bond-maid  and  her  offspring. 

"  With  this  law  before  his  eyes,  what  Christian  can  believe  that 
the  Almighty  attached  immorality  or  sin  to  the  condition  of 
slavery  ?" — BISHOP  HOPKINS'S  LETTER,  page  3,  Democratic  Com 
mittee  8  Edition. 

"  Negro  slavery  has  been  an  incalculable  blessing  to  us." — 
JuDtiE  WOODWARD'S  SPEECH,  page  9,  Democratic  Committees 
Edition. 

Judge  of  this  "incalculable  blessing"  as  it  appears  in  the  follow- 
in;!  plain  every- day  record  of  facts,  as  they  exhibit  the  woes,  horrors, 
and  crimes  of  Slavery  ! 

(Extract  from  MRS.  KKMBLE'S  Journal.) 

In  a  conversation  with  old  "  House  Molly,"  as  she  is  called,  to  distin 
guish  her  from  all  other  Mollies  on  the  estate,  she  having  had  the  honor 


15 

of  being  a  servant  in  Major 's  house  for  many  years,  I  asked  her  if 

the  relation  between  men  and  won,en  who  are  what  they  call  married, 
/.  e.,  who  have  agreed  to  live  together  as  man  and  wife  (the  only  species 
of  marriage  formerly  allowed  on  tho  estate,  I  believe  now  London  may 
read  the  Marriage  Service  to  them),  was  considered  binding  by  the  people 
themselves  and  by  the  overseer.  She  said  "not  much  formerly,"  and 
that  the  people  couldn't  be  expected  to  have  much  regard  to  such  an  en 
gagement,  utterly  ignored  as  it  was  by  Mr.  K- ,  whose  invariable  rule, 

if  he  heard  of  any  disagreement  between  a  man  and  woman  calling  them 
selves  married,  was  immediately  to  bestow  them  in  "  marriage"  on  other 
parties,  whether  they  chose  it  or  not,  by  which  summary  process  the 
slightest  "  incompatibility  of  temper"  received  the  relief  of  a  divorce  more 
rapid  and  easy  than  even  Germany  could  afford,  and  the  estate  lost  nothing 
by  any  prolongation  of  celibacy  on  either  side.  Of  course,  the  misery 
consequent  upon  such  arbitrary  destruction  of  voluntary  and  imposition  of 
involuntary  ties  was  nothing  to  Mr.  K . 

I  was  very  sorry  to  hear  to-day  that  Mr.  0 ,  the  overseer  at  the 

rice-island,  of  whom  I  have  made  mention  to  you  more  than  once  in  my 
letters,  had  had  one  of  the  men  flogged  very  severely  for  getting  his  wife 
baptized.  I  was  quite  unable,  from  the  account  I  received,  to  understand 
what  his  objection  had  been  to  the  poor  man's  desire  to  make  his  wife  at 
least  a  formal  Christian  ;  but  it  does  seem  dreadful  that  such  an  act  should 
be  so  visited.  I  almost  wish  I  was  back  again  at  the  rice-island ;  for, 
though  this  is  every  way  the  pleasanter  residence,  I  hear  so  much  more 
that  is  intolerable  of  the  treatment  of  the  slaves  from  those  I  find  here, 
that  my  life  is  really  made  wretched  by  it.  There  is  not  a  single  natural 
right  that  is  not  taken  away  from  these  unfortunate  people,  and  the  worst 
of  all  is,  that  their  condition  does  not  appear  to  me,  upon  farther  observa 
tion  of  it,  to  be  susceptible  of  even  partial  alleviation  as  long  as  the  funda 
mental  evil,  the  slavery  itself,  remains. 

The  women  who  visited  me  yesterday  evening  were  all  in  the  family 
way,  and  came  to  entreat  of  me  to  have  the  sentence  (what  else  can  I  call 
it?)  modified,  which  condemns  them  to  resume  their  labor  of  hoeing  in 
the  fields  three  weeks  after  their  confinement.  They  knew,  of  course, 
that  I  cannot  interfere  with  their  appointed  labor,  and  therefore  their  sole 

entreaty  was  that  I  would  use  my  influence  with  Mr. to  obtain  for 

them  a  month's  respite  from  labor  in  the  field  after  childbearing.  Their 
principal  spokeswoman,  a  woman  with  a  bright  sweet  face,  called  Mary, 
and  a  very  sweet  voice,  which  is  by  no  means  an  uncommon  excellence 
among  them,  appealed  to  my  own  experience;  and  while  she  spoke  of  my 
babies,  and  my  carefully  tended,  delicately  nursed,  and  tenderly  watched 
confinement  and  convalescence,  and  implored  me  to  have  a  kind  of  labor 
given  to  them  less  exhausting  during  the  month  after  their  confinement,  I 


16 

held  the  table  before  me  so  hard  in  order  not  to  cry,  that  I  think  my 
fingers  ought  to  have  left  a  mark  on  it.  At  length  I  told  them  that  Mr. 

had  forbidden  me  to  bring  him  any  more  complaints  from  them,  for  that 

he  thought  the  ease  with  which  I  received  and  believed  their  stories  only 
tended  to  make  them  discontented,  and  that,  therefore,  I  feared  I  could 
not  promise  to  take  their  petitions  to  him  ;  but  that  he  would  be  coming 
down  to  "  the  Point"  soon,  and  that  they  had  better  come  then  some  time 
when  I  was  with  him,  and  say  what  they  had  just  been  saying  to  me ;  and 
with  this  and  various  small  bounties,  I  was  forced,  with  a  heavy  heart,  to 
dismiss  them  ;  and  when  they  were  gone,  with  many  exclamations  of  "  Oh 
yes,  missis,  you  will,  you  will  speak  to  rnassa  for  we ;  God  bless  you, 
missis,  we  sure  you  will !"  I  had  my  cry  out  for  them,  for  myself,  for  us. 
All  these  women  had  had  large  families,  and  all  of  them  had  lost  half 
their  children,  and  several  of  them  had  lost  more.  How  I  do  ponder  upon 
the  strange  fate  which  has  brought  me  here,  from  so  far  away,  from  sur 
roundings  so  curiously  different.  How  my  own  people  in  that  blessed 
England  of  my  birth  would  marvel  if  they  could  suddenly  have  a  vision  of 
me  as  I  sit  here,  and  how  sorry  some  of  them  would  be  for  me ! 

After  I  had  been  in  the  house  a  little  while,  I  was  summoned  out  again 
to  receive  the  petition  of  certain  poor  women  in  the  family-way  to  have 
their  work  lightened.  I  was,  of  course,  obliged  to  tell  them  that  I  could 
not  interfere  in  the  matter  j  that  their  master  was  away,  and  that  when  he 
came  back,  they  must  present  their  request  to  him  :  they  said  they  had 
already  begged  "  massa,"  and  he  had  refused,  and  they  thought,  perhaps, 
if  "  missis"  begged  "  massa"  for  them,  he  would  lighten  their  task.  Poor 
"missis,"  poor  "massa,"  poor  woman,  that  1  am  to  have  such  prayers  ad 
dressed  to  me  !  I  had  to  tell  them  that  if  they  had  already  spoken  to  their 
master,  I  was  afraid  my  doing  so  would  be  of  no  use,  but  that  when  he 
came  back  I  would  try;  so  choking  with  crying,  I  turned  away  from  them, 
and  re-entered  the  house,  to  the  chorus  of  "  Oh  !  thank  you,  missis  !  God 

bless  you,  missis!"    E ,  I  think  an  improvement  might  be  made  upon 

that  caricature  published  a  short  time  ago,  called  the  "  Chivalry  of  the 
South."  I  think  an  elegant  young  Carolinian  or  Georgian  gentleman, 
whip  in  hand,  driving  a  gang  of  "  lusty  women,"  as  they  are  called  here, 
would  be  a  pretty  version  of  the  "  Chivalry  of  the  South," — a  little  coarse, 
I  am  afraid  you  will  say.  Oh  !  quite  horribly  coarse,  but  then  so  true, — 
a  e;reat  matter  in  works  of  art,  which  nowadays  appear  to  be  thought  ex 
cellent  only  in  proportion  to  their  lack  of  ideal  elevation.  That  would  be 
a  subject,  and  a  treatment  of  it,  which  could  not  be  accused  of  imaginative 
exaggeration  at  any  rate. 

After  my  return  home,  I  had  my  usual  evening  reception,  and  among 


17 

other  pleasant  incidents  of  plantation  life,  heard  the  following  agreeable 
anecdote  from  a  woman  named  Sophy,  who  came  to  beg  for  some  rice. 
In  asking  her  about  her  husband  and  children,  she  said  she  had  never  had 
any  husband ;  that  she  had  had  two  children  by  a  white  man  of  the  name 
of  Walker,  who  was  employed  at  the  mill  on  the  rice-island.  She  was  in 
the  hospital  after  the  birth  of  the  second  child  she  bore  this  man,  and  at 

the  same  time  two  women,  Judy  and  Sylla,  of  whose  children  Mr.  K 

was  the  father,  were  recovering  from  their  confinements.     It  was  not  a 

month  since  any  of  them  had  been  delivered,  when  Mrs.  K came  to 

the  hospital,  had  them  all  three  severely  flogged,  a  process  which  she  per 
sonally  superintended,  and  then  sent  them  to  Five  Pound, — the  swamp 
Botany  Bay  of  the  plantation,  of  which  I  have  told  you, — with  farther 

orders  to  the  drivers  to  flog  them  every  day  for  a  week.     Now,  E ,  if 

I  make  you  sick  with  these  disgusting  stories,  I  cannot  help  it;  they  are 
the  life  itself  here.  Hitherto  I  have  thought  these  details  intolerable 
enough,  but  this  apparition  of  a  female  fiend  in  the  middle  of  this  hell  I 
confess  adds  an  element  of  cruelty  which  seems  to  me  to  surpass  all  the 
rest.  Jealousy  is  not  an  uncommon  quality  in  the  feminine  temperament, 
and  just  conceive  the  fate  of  these  unfortunate  women  between  the  passions 
of  their  masters  and  mistresses,  each  alike  armed  with  power  to  oppress  and 
torture  them.  I  Sophy  went  on  to  say  that  Isaac  was  her  son  by  Driver 
Morris,  who  had  forced  her  while  she  was  in  her  miserable  exile  at  Five 
Pound.  Almost  beyond  my  patience  with  this  string  of  detestable  details, 
I  exclaimed, — foolishly  enough,  heaven  knows, — "  Ah  !  but  don't  you 
know, — did  nobody  ever  tell  or  teach  any  of  you  that  it  is  a  sin  to  live 

with  men  who  are  not  your  husbands  ?"     Alas  !  E ,  what  could  the 

poor  creature  answer  but  what  she  did,  seizing  me  at  the  same  time  vehe 
mently  by  the  wrist :  "•  Oh  yes,  missis,  we  know  ;  we  know  all  about  that 
well  enough ;  but  we  do  anything  to  get  our  poor  flesh  some  rest  from  de 
whip.  When  he  made  me  follow  him  into  de  bush,  what  use  me  tell  him 
no  ?  he  have  strength  to  make  me."/  I  have  written  down  the  woman's 
words  ;  I  wish  I  could  wfite  down  the  voice  and  look  of  abject  misery  with 
which  they  were  spoken.  Now  you  will  observe  that  the  story  was  not 
told  to  me  as  a  complaint ;  it  was  a  thing  long  past  and  over,  of  which  she 
only  spoke  in  the  natural  course  of  accounting  for  her  children  to  me. 
I  make  no  comment;  what  need,  or  can  I  add  to  such  stories?  But  how 
is  such  a  state  of  things  to  endure  ?  and  again,  how  is  it  to  end  ?  While 
I  was  pondering,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  at  the  very  bottom  of  the  Slough  of 
Despond,  on  this  miserable  creature's  story,  another  woman  came  in  (Tema), 
carrying  in  her  arms  a  child  the  image  of  the  mulatto  Bran ;  she  came  to 
beg  for  flannel.  I  asked  her  who  was  her  husband.  She  said  she  was  not 
married.  Her  child  is  the  child  of  Bricklayer  Temple,  who  has  a  wife  at 
the  rice-island.  By  this  time,  what  do  you  think  of  the  moralities,  as  well 

2 


18 

as  the  amenities  of  slave  life  ?  These  are  the  conditions  which  can  only 
be  known  to  one  who  lives  among  them ;  flagrant  acts  of  cruelty  may  be 
rare,  but  this  ineffable  state  of  utter  degradation,  this  really  beastly  exis 
tence,  is  the  normal  condition  of  these  men  and  women,  and  of  that  no  one 
seems  to  take  heed,  nor  have  I  ever  heard  it  described,  so  as  to  form  any 
adequate  conception  of  it,  till  I  found  myself  plunged  into  it.  Where 
and  how  is  one  to  begin  the  cleansing  of  this  horrid  pestilential  immon- 
dezzio  of  an  existence  ? 


CHAPTER    IV. 

/ 

THE  NEW  DECLARATION  OF  INDEPENDENCE. 

"FOR  liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity,  we  have  deliberately 
substituted  slavery,  subordination,  and  government." — RICHMOND 
EXAMINER,  May  30,  1863. 

"First  on  the  list  stand  the  propositions  of  the  far-famed  Decla 
ration  of  Independence,  £  that  all  men  are  created  equal ;  that  they 
are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  inalienable  rights ;  that 
among  these  are  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness.'  These 
statements  are  here  called 'self-evident  truths;'  but  with  due  re 
spect  to  the  celebrated  names  which  are  appended  to  this  document, 
I  have  never  been  able  to  comprehend  that  they  are  '  truths '  at 
all." — BISHOP  HOPKINS'S  LETTER,  page  7. 

"  I  have  been,  I  fear,  unreasonably  tedious  in  thus  endeavoring 
to  show  why  I  utterly  discard  these  famous  propositions  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  It  is  because  I  am  aware  of  the 
strong  hold  which  they  have  gained  over  the  ordinary  mind  of  the 
nation.  They  are  assumed  by  thousands  upon  thousands,  as  if  they 
were  the  very  doctrines  of  Divine  truth,  and  they  are  made  the 
basis  of  the  hostile  feeling  against  the  Slavery  of  the  South,  not 
withstanding  their  total  ivant  of  rationality  " — BISHOP  HOPKINS'S 
LETTER,  page  9. 

"  I  am  utterly  opposed  to  those  popular  propositions  (of  the  Dec 
laration  of  Independence),  not  only  because  I  hold  them  to  be  alto 
gether  fallacious  and  untrue,  for  the  reason  already  given,  but 
further,  because  their  tendency  is  in  direct  contrariety  to  the  pre 
cepts  of  the  Gospel,  and  the  highest  interests  of  the  individual  man ; 


19 

for  what  is  the  unavoidable  effect  of  this  doctrine  of  human  equality? 
Is  it  not  to  nourish  the  spirit  of  pride,  envy,  and  contention  ?  To 
set  the  servant  against  the  master,  the  poor  against  the  rich,  the 
weak  against  the  strong,  the  ignorant  against  the  educated  ?  To 
loosen  all  the  bonds  and  relations  of  society,  and  reduce  the  whole 
duty  of  subordination  to  the  selfish  cupidity  of  pecuniary  interest, 
without  an  atom  of  respect  for  age,  for  office,  for  law,  for  govern 
ment,  for  Providence,  or  for  the  word  of  God  ?" — BISHOP  HOPKINS'S 
LETTER,  page  10. 

"  The  fifth  objection  which  often  meets  the  Northern  ear,  pro 
ceeds  from  the  overweening  value  attached  in  our  age  and  country 
to  the  name  of  liberty,  since  it  is  common  to  call  it  the  dearest 
right  of  man,  and  to  esteem  its  loss  as  the  greatest  possible  calamity ; 
hence,  we  frequently  find  persons  who  imagine  that  the  whole  ar 
gument  is  triumphantly  settled  by  the  question,  ^  How  would  you 
like  to  be  a  slave?'  This  is  a  '  very  puerile  interrogatory.'" — 
BISHOP  HOPKINS'S  LETTER,  page  13. 

The  above  quotations  are  from  a  document  issued  by  the  State 
Central  Committee  of  the  Democratic  Party  !  If  Slavery,  and  not 
Freedom,  is  to  be  the  corner-stone  of  our  Republican  Government, 
let  the  following  account  of  the  poor  whites  of  the  South,  show 
what  such  doctrines  lead  to  ! 

.(Extract  from  Journal  of  MRS.  KEMBLE.) 

On  our  drive  we  passed  occasionally  a  tattered  man  or  woman,  whose 
yellow  mud  complexion,  straight  features  and  singularly  sinister  counte 
nance  bespoke  an  entirely  different  race  from  the  negro  population  in  the 
midst  of  which  they  lived.  These  are  the  so-called  Pine-landers  of  Geor 
gia,  I  suppose  the  most  degraded  race  of  human  beings  claiming  an 
Anglo-Saxon  origin  that  can  be  found  on  the  face  of  the  earth — filthy, 
lazy,  ignorant,  brutal,  proud,  penniless  savages,  without  one  of  the  nobler 
attributes  which  have  been  occasionally  found  allied  to  the  vices  of  savage 
nature.  They  own  no  slaves,  for  they 'are  almost  without  exception  abjectly 
poor  -,  they  will  not  work,  for  that,  as  they  conceive,  would  reduce  them 
to  an  equality  with  the  abhorred  negroes;  they  squat,  and  steal,  and 
starve,  on  the  outskirts  of  this  lowest  of  all  civilized  societies,  and  their 
countenances  bear  witness  to  the  squalor  of  their  condition,  and  the  utter, 
degradation  of  their  natures.  To  the  crime  of  Slavery,  though  they 
have  no  profitable  part  or  lot  in  it,  they  are  fiercely  accessory,  because  it 
is  the  barrier  which  divides  the  black  and  white  races,  at  the  foot  of  which 
they  lie  wallowing  in  unspeakable  degradation,  but  immensely  proud  of 


20 

the  base  freedom  that  still  separates  them  from  the  lash-driven  tillers  of 
the  soil.* 

After  dinner  I  had  a  most  interesting  conversation  with  Mr.  K . 

Among  other  subjects  he  gave  me  a  lively  and  curious  description  of  the 
yeomanry  of  Georgia,  more  properly  termed  Pine-landers.  Have  you  visions 
now  of  well-to-do  farmers  with  comfortable  homesteads,  decent  habits, 
industrious,  intelligent,  cheerful  and  thrifty  ?  Such,  however,  is  not  the 
yeomanry  of  Georgia.  Labor  being  here  the  especial  portion  of  slaves,  it 
is  thenceforth  degraded,  and  considered  unworthy  of  all  but  slaves.  No 
white  man,  therefore,  of  any  class  puts  hand  to  work  of  any  kind  soever. 
This  is  an  exceedingly  dignified  way  of  proving  their  gentility  for  the 
lazy  planters  who  prefer  an  idle  life  of  semi-starvation  and  barbarism  to  the 
degradation  of  doing  anything  themselves ;  but  the  effect  on  the  poorer 
whites  of  the  country  is  terrible.  I  speak  now  of  the  scattered  white 
population,  who,  too  poor  to  possess  land  or  slaves,  and  having  no  means 
of  living  in  the  towns,  squat  (most  appropriately  is  it  so  termed)  either 
on  other  men's  land  or  government  districts — always  here  swamp  or  pine 
barren — and  claim  masterdom  over  the  place  they  invade,  till  ejected  by 
the  rightful  proprietors.  These  wretched  creatures  will  not,  for  they  are 
whites  (and  labor  belongs  to  blacks  and  slaves  alone  here),  labor  for  their 
own  subsistence.  They  are  hardly  protected  from  the  weather  by  the  rude 
shelters  they  frame  for  themselves  in  the  midst  of  these  dreary  woods. 
Their  food  is  chiefly  supplied  by  shooting  the  wild-fowl  and  venison,  and 
stealing  from  the  cultivated  patches  of  the  plantations  nearest  at  hand. 
Their  clothes  hang  about  them  in  filthy  tatters,  and  the  combined  squalor 
and  fierceness  of  their  appearance  is  really  frightful. 

This  population  is  the  direct  growth  of  s4avery.     The  planters  are  loud 

*0f  such  is  the  white  family  so  wonderfully  described  in  Mrs.  Stowe's  "  Dred,'» 
whose  only  slave  brings  up  the  orphaned  children  of  his  masters  with  such  ex 
quisitely  grotesque  and  pathetic  tenderness.  From  such  the  conscription  which 
has  fed  the  Southern  army  in  the  deplorable  civil  conflict  now  raging  in  America 
has  drawn  its  rank  and  file.  Better  "  food  for  powder"  the  world  could  scarcely 
supply.  Fierce  and  idle,  with  hardly  one  of  the  necessities  or  amenities  that  belong 
to  civilized  existence,  they  are  hardy,  endurers  of  hardship,  and  reckless  to  a 
savage  degree  01"  the  value  of  life,  whether  their  own  or  others.  The  soldiers' 
pay,  received  or  promised,  exceeds  in  amount  per  month  anything  they  ever 
earned  before  per  year,  and  the  war  they  wage  is  one  that  enlists  all  their  proud 
and  ferocious  instincts.  It  is  against  the  Yankees — the  Northern  sons  of  free 
soil,  free  toil  and  intelligence,  the  hated  Abolitionists,  whose  success  would  sweep 
away  slavery  and  reduce  the  Southern  white  men  to  work — no  wonder  they  are 
ready  to  fight  to  the  death  against  this  detestable  alternative,  especially  as  they 
look  to  victory  as  the  certain  promotion  of  the  refuse  of  the  "poor  white"  popu 
lation  of  the  South,  of  which  they  are  one  and  all  members,  to  the  coveted 
dignity  of  slaveholders. 


21 

in  their  execrations  of  these  miserable  vagabonds ;  yet  they  do  not  see 
that  so  long  as  labor  is  considered  the  disgraceful  portion  of  slaves,  these 
free  men  will  hold  it  nobler  to  starve  or  steal  than  till  the  earth,  with  none 
but  the  despised  blacks  for  fellow-laborers.  The  blacks  themselves — such 
is  the  infinite  power  of  custom — acquiesce  in  this  notion,  and,  as  I  have 
told  you,  consider  it  the  lowest  degradation  in  a  white  to  use  any  exertion. 
I  wonder,  considering  the  burdens  they  have  seen  me  lift,  the  digging, 
the  planting,  the  rowing,  and  the  walking  I  do,  that  they  do  not  utterly 
contemn  me,  and  indeed  they  seem  lost  in  amazement  at  it. 

Talking  of  these  Pine-landers — gipsies,  without  any  of  the  romantic 
associations  that  belong  to  the  latter  people — led  us  to  the  origin  of  such 
a  population,  Slavery ;  and  you  may  be  sure  I  listened  with  infinite  inte 
rest  to  the  opinions  of  a  man  of  uncommon  shrewdness  and  sagacity,  who 
was  born  in  the  very  bosom  of  it,  and  has  passed  his  whole  life  among 
slaves.  If  any  one  is  competent  to  judge  of  its  effects,  such  a  man  is  the 
one  ;  and  this  was  his  verdict :  "  I  hate  Slavery  with  all  my  heart ;  I  con 
sider  it  an  absolute  curse  wherever  it  exists.  It  will  keep  those  States 
where  it  does  exist  fifty  years  behind  the  others  in  improvement  and 
prosperity."  Farther  on  in  the  conversation  he  made  this  most  remark 
able  observation :  "  As  for  its  being  an  irremediable  evil — a  thing  not  to 
be  helped  or  got  rid  of — that's  all  nonsense  ;  for,  as  soon  as  people  become 
convinced  that  it  is  their  interest  get  rid  of  it,  they  will  find  soon  the  means 
to  do  so,  depend  upon  it.  And  undoubtedly  this  is  true.  This  is  not  an 
age,  nor  yours  a  country,  where  a  large  mass  of  people  will  long  endure 
what  they  perceive  to  be  injurious  to  their  fortunes  and  advancement. 
Blind  as  people  often  are  to  their  highest  and  truest  interests,  your  country 
folk  have  generally  shown  remarkable  acuteness  in  finding  out  where  their 
worldly  progress  suffered  let  or  hindrance,  and  have  removed  it  with  lau 
dable  alacrity.  Now  the  fact  is  not  at  all  as  we  at  the  North  are  some 
times  told,  that  the  Southern  slaveholders  deprecate  the  evils  of  slavery 
quite  as  much  as  we  do  j  that  they  see  all  its  miseries ;  that,  moreover, 
they  are  most  anxious  to  get  rid  of  the  whole  thing,  but  want  the  means 
to  do  so,  and  submit  most  unwillingly  to  a  necessity  -from  which  they  can 
not  extricate  themselves.  All  this  I  thought  might  be  true  before  I  went 
to  the  South,  and  often  has  the  charitable  supposition  checked  the  con 
demnation  which  was  indignantly  rising  to  my  lips  against  these  murderers 
of  their  brethren's  peace. 


DEAREST  E : 

Passing  the  rice-mill  this  morning  in  my  walk,  I  went  in  to  look  at 
the  machinery,  the  large  steam  mortars  which  shell  the  rice,  and  which 
work  under  the  intelligent  and  reliable  supervision  of  Engineer  Ned. 


22 

I  was  much  surprised,  in  the  course  of  'conversation  with  him  this 
morning,  to  find  how  much"  older  a  man  he  was  than  he  appeared.  Indeed, 
his  youthful  appearance  had  hitherto  puzzled  me  much  in  accounting  for 
his  very  superior  intelligence  and  the  important  duties  confided  to  him. 
He  is,  however,  a  man  upward  of  forty  years  old,  although  he  looks  ten 
years  younger.  He  attributed  his  own  uncommonly  youthful  appearance 
to  the  fact  of  his  never  having  done  what  he  called  field-work,  or  been 
exposed,  as  the  common  gang  negroes  are,  to  the  hardships  of  their  all  but 
brutish  existence.  He  said  his  former  master  had  brought  him  up  very 
kindly,  and  he  had  learned  to  tend  the  engines,  and  had  never  been  put 
to  any  other  work,  but  he  said  this  was  not  the  case  with  his  poor  wife. 
He  wished  she  was  as  well  off  as  he  was,  but  she  had  to  work  in  the  rice- 
fields,  and  was  "  most  broke  in  two  "  with  labor,  and  exposure,  and  hard 
work  while  with  child,  and  hard  work  just  directly  after  childbearing;  he 
said  she  could  hardly  crawl,  and  he  urged  me  very  much  to  speak  a  kind 
word  for  her  to  massa.  She  was  almost  all  the  time  in  hospital,  and  he 
thought  she  could  not  live  long. 

Now,  E ,  here  is  another  instance  of  the  horrible  injustice  of  this 

system  of  slavery.  In  my  country  or  in  yours,  a  man  endowed  with  suffi 
cient  knowledge  and  capacity  to  be  an  engineer  would,  of  course,  be  in  the 
receipt  of  considerable  wages  j  his  wife  would,  together  with  himself,  reap 
the  advantages  of  his  ability,  and  share  the  well-being  his  labor  earned ; 
he  would  be  able  to  procure  for  her  comfort  in  sickness  or  in  health,  and 
beyond  the  necessary  household  work,  which  the  wives  of  most  artisans  are 
inured  to,  she  would  have  no  labor  to  encounter;  in  case  of  sickness  even 
these  would  be  alleviated  by  the  assistance  of  some  stout  girl  of  all  work 
or  kindly  neighbor,  and  the  tidy  parlor  or  snug  bedroom  would  be  her  re 
treat  if  unequal  to  the  daily  duties  of  her  own  kitchen.  Think  of  such  a 

lot  compared  with  that  of  the  head  engineer  of.  Mr. ;s  plantation, 

whose  sole  wages  are  his  coarse  food  and  raiment  and  miserable  hovel,  and 
whose  wife,  covered  with  one  filthy  garment  of  ragged  texture  and  dingy 
color,  barefooted  and  bareheaded,  is  daily  driven  afield  to  labor  with  aching 
pain-racked  joints,  under  the  lash  of  a  driver,  or  lies  languishing  on  the 
earthen  floor  of  the  dismal  plantation  hospital  in  a  condition  of  utter 
physical  destitution  and  degradation  such  as  the  most  miserable  dwelling  of 
the  poorest  inhabitant  of  your  free  Northern  villages  neve/  beheld  the  like 
of.  Think  of  the  rows  of  tidy  tiny  houses  in  the  long  suburbs  of  Boston  and 
Philadelphia,  inhabited  by  artisans  of  just  the  same  grade  as  this  poor 
Ned,  with  their  white  doors  and  steps,  their  hydrants  of  inexhaustible 
fresh  flowing  water,  the  innumerable  appliances  for  decent  comfort  of  their 
cheerful  rooms,  the  gay  wardrobe  of  the  wife,  her  cotton  prints  for  daily 
use,  her  silk  for  Sunday  church-going ;  the  careful  comfort  of  the  children's 
clothing,  the  books  and  newspapers  in  the  little  parlor,  the  daily  district 


23 

school,  the  weekly  parish  church  :  imagine  if  you  can — but  you  are  happy 
that  you  can  not — the  contrast  between  such  an  existence  and  that  of  the 
best  mechanic  on  a  Southern  plantation. 


CHAPTER    V. 

THE  CORNER-STONE  OF  SOUTHERN  SOCIETY  AND  GOVERNMENT. 

"  The  slavery  of  the  negro  race,  as  maintained  in  the  Southern 
States,  appears  to  me  fully  authorized  both  in  the  Old  and  the  New 
Testament,  which,  as  the  written  word  of  God,  afford  the  only  in~ 
fallible  standard  of  moral  rights  and  obligations." — BISHOP 
HOPKINS' s  LETTER,  page  16,  Democratic  Committee 's  Edition. 

"  In  all  the  sayings  of  our  Saviour,  we  hear  no  injunction  for  the 
suppression  of  a  slavery  which  existed  under  His  eyes ;  while  He 
delivered  many  maxims  and  precepts  which,  like  the  golden  rule, 
enter  right  into  and  regulate  the  relation." — JUDGE  WOODWARD'S 
SPEECH,  DEC.  13th,  1860,  page  10. 

What  a  blasphemous  use  of  the  Word  of  God,  to  use  it  as  an  ex 
cuse,  palliation,  and  even  Divine  sanction,  for  the  horrible  system, 
laid  bare  and  quivering,  in  the  following  extracts ! 

(Extract  from  Journal  of  MRS.  KEMBLE,) 
On  my  return  from  the  river  I  had  a  long  and  painful  conversation  with 

Mr. upon  the  subject  of  the  flogging  which  had  been  inflicted  on  the 

wretched  Teresa.  These  discussions  are  terrible  :  they  throw  me  into  per 
fect  agonies  of  distress  fo.r  the  slaves,  whose  position  is  utterly  hopeless; 
for  myself,  whose  intervention  in  their  behalf  somtimes  seems  to  me  worse 

than  useless ;  for  Mr. ,  whose  share  in  this  horrible  system  fills  me  by 

turns  with  indignation  and  pity.  But,  after  all,  what  can  he  do  ?  how 
can  he  help  it  all  ?  Moreover,  born  and  bred  in  America,  how  should  he 
care  or  wish  to  help  it  ?  and,  of  course,  he  does  not;,  and  I  am  in  despair 
that  he  does  not : .  et  voila,  it  is  a  happy  and  hopeful  plight  for  us  both. 
He  maintained  thq,t  there  had  been  neither  hardship  nor  injustice  in  the 
case  of  Teresa's  flogging ;  and  that,  moreover,  she  had  not  'been  flogged  at 
all  for  complaining  to  me,  but  simply  because  her  allotted  task  was  not 
done  at  the  appointed  time.  Of  course  this  was  the  result  of  her  having 
come  to  appeal  to  me  instead  of  going  to  her  labor ;  and  as  she  knew  per 
fectly  well  the  penalty  she  was  incurring,  he  maintained  that  there  was 
neither  hardship  nor  injustice  in  the  case;  the  whole  thing  was  a  regularly 


24 

established  law,  with  which  all  the  slaves  were  perfectly  well  acquainted  ; 
and  this  case  was  no  exception  whatever.  The  circumstance  of  my  being 
on  the  island  could  not,  of  course,  be  allowed  to  overthrow  the  whole 
system  of  discipline  established  to  secure  the  labor  and  obedience  of  the 
slaves ;  and  if  they  chose  to  try  experiments  as  to  that  fact,  they  and  I 
must  take  the  consequences.  At  the  end  of  the  day,  the  driver  of  the 

gang  to  which  Teresa  belongs  reported  her  work  not  done,  and  Mr.  0 

ordered  him  to  give  her  the  usual  number  of  stripes,  which  order  the 
driver  of  course  obeyed,  without  knowing  how  Teresa  had  employed  her 

time  instead   of  hoeing.      But  Mr.   0 knew  well  enough,  for  the 

wretched  woman  told  me  that  she  had  herself  told  him  she  should  appeal 
to  me  about  her  weakness,  and  suffering,  and  inability  to  do  the  work  ex 
acted  from  her. 

He  did  not,  however,  think  proper  to  exceed  in  her  punishment  the 
usual  number  of  stripes  allotted  to  the  non-performance  of  the  appointed 
daily  task,  and  Mr. pronounced  the  whole  transaction  perfectly  satis 
factory  and  en  regie.  The  common  drivers  are  limited  in  their  powers  of 
chastisement,  not  being  allowed  to  administer  more  than  a  certain  number 
of  lashes  to  their  fellow-slaves.  Headman  Frank,  as  he  is  called,  has 
alone  the  privilege  of  exceeding  this  limit ;  and  the  overseer's  latitude  of 
infliction  is  only  curtailed  by  the  necessity  of  avoiding  injury  to  life  or 
limb.  The  master's  irresponsible  power  has  no  such  bound.  When  I  was 
thus  silenced  on  the  particular  case  under  discussion,  I  resorted,  in  my 
distress  and  indignation,  to  the  abstract  question,  as  I  never  can  refrain 

from  doing ;   and  to  Mr. 'a  assertion  of  the  justice  of  poor  Teresa's 

punishment,  I  retorted  the  manifest  injustice  of  unpaid  and  enforced 
labor;  the  brutal  inhumanity  of  allowing  a  man  to  strip  and  lash  a  woman, 
the  mother  of  ten  children ;  to  exact  from  her  toil  which  was  to  maintain 
in  luxury  two  idle  young  men,  the  owners  of  the  plantation.  I  said  I 
thought  female  labor  of  the  sort  exacted  from  these  slaves,  and  corporal 
chastisement  such  as  they  endure,  must  be  abhorrent  to  any  manly  or 

humane  man.     Mr. said  he  thought  it  was  disagreeable,  and  left  me 

to  my  reflections  with  that  concession.  My  letter  has  been  interrupted 
for  the  last  three  days — by  nothing  special,  however.  My  occupations 

and  interests  here,  of  course,  know  no  change ;  but  Mr. has  been 

anxious  for  a  little  while  past  that  we  should  go  down  to  St.  Simon's,  the 
cotton  plantation. 

Keturning  to  the  house,  I  passed  up  the  "street."  It  was  between 
eleven  o'clock  and  noon,  and  the  people  were  taking  their  first  meal  in  the 

day.     By-the-by,  E ,  how  do  you  think   Berkshire   county  farmers 

would  relish  laboring  hard  all  day  upon  two  meals  of  Indian  corn  or 
hominy  ?  Such  is  the  regulation  on  this  plantation,  however,  and  I  beg 


25 

you  to  bear  in  mind  that  the  negroes  on  Mr. 's  estate  are  generally 

considered  well  off.  They  go  to  the  fields  at  daybreak,  carrying  with  them 
their  allowance  of  food  for  the  day,  which,  toward  noon,  and  not  till  then, 
they  eat,  cooking  it  over  a  fire,  which  they  kindle  as  best  they  can,  where 
they  are  working.  Their  second  meal  in  the  day  is  at  night,  after  their 
labor  is  over,  having  worked,  at  the  very  least,  six  hours  without  inter 
mission  of  rest  or  refreshment  since  their  noonday  meal  (properly  so 
called,  for  'tis  meal,  and  nothing  else).  Those  that  I  passed  to-day,  sitting 
on  their  door-steps,  or  on  the  ground  round  them  eating,  were  the  people 
employed  at  the  mill  and  threshing-floor.  As  these  are  near  to  the  settle 
ment,  they  had  time  to  get  their  food  from  the  cook-shop.  Chairs,  tables, 
plates,  knives,  forks,  they  had  none ;  they  sat,  as  I  before  said,  on  the 
earth  or  door-steps,  and  ate  either  out  of  their  little  cedar  tubs  or  an  iron 
pot,  some  few  with  broken  iron  spoons,  more  with  pieces  of  wood,  and  all 
the  children  with  their  fingers.  A  more  complete  sample  of  savage  feed 
ing  I  never  beheld. 

At  the  upper  end  of  the  row  of  houses,  and  nearest  to  our  overseer's 
residence,  is  the  hut  of  the  head  driver.  Let  me  explain,  by  the  way,  his 
office.  The  negroes,  as  I  before  told  you,  are  divided  into  troops  or  gangs, 
as  they  are  called ;  at  the  head  of  each  gang  is  a  driver,  who  stands  over 
them,  whip  in  hand,  while  they  perform  their  daily  task,  who  renders  an 
account  of  each  individual  slave  and  his  work  every  evening  to  the  over 
seer,  and  receives  from  him  directions  for  their  next  day's  tasks.  Each 
driver  is  allowed  to  inflict  a  dozen  lashes  upon  any  refractory  slave  in  the 
field,  and  at  the  time  of  the  offence ;  they  may  not,  however,  extend  the 
chastisement,  and  if  it  is  found  ineffectual,  their  remedy  lies  in  reporting 
the  unmanageable  individual. either  to  the  head  driver  or  the  overseer,  the 
former  of  whom  has  power  to  inflict  three  dozen  lashes  at  his  own  discre 
tion,  and  the  latter  as  many  as  he  himself  sees  fit,  within  the  number  of 
fifty;  which  limit,  however,  I  must  tell  you,  is  an  arbitrary  one  on  this 

plantation,  appointed  by  the  founder  of  the  estate,  Major ,  Mr. 'a 

grandfather,  many  of  whose  regulations,  indeed  I  believe  most  of  them, 
are  still  observed  in  the  government  of  the  plantation.  Limits  of  this 
sort,  however,  to  the  power  of  either  driver,  head  driver,  or  overseer,  may 
or  may  not  exist  elsewhere;  they  are,  to  a  certain  degree,  a  check  upon 
the  power  of  these  individuals ;  but  in  the  absence  of  the  master,  the  over 
seer  may  confine  himself  within  the  limit  or  not,  as  he  chooses;  and  as  for 
the  master  himself,  where  is  his  limit  ?  He  may,  if  he  likes,  flog  a  slave 
to  death,  for  the  laws  which  pretend  that  he  may  not  are  a  mere  pretence, 
inasmuch  as  the  testimony  of  a  black  is  never  taken  against  a  white ;  and 
upon  this  plantation  of  ours,  and  a  thousand  more,  the  overseer  is  the  only 
white  man,  so  whence  should  come  the  testimony  to  any  crime  of  his  ? 


With  regard  to  the  oft-repeated  statement  that  it  is  not  the  owner's 
interest  to  destroy  his  human  property,  it  answers  nothing;  the  instances 
in  which  men,  to  gratify  the  immediate  impulse  of  passion,  sacrifice  not 
only  their  eternal,  but  their  evident,  palpable,  positive  worldly  interest, 
are  infinite.  Nothing  is  commoner  than  for  a  man  under  the  transient  in 
fluence  of  anger  to  disregard  his  worldly  advantage ;  and  the  black  slave, 
whose  preservation  is  indeed  supposed  to  be  his  owner's  interest,  may  be, 
will  be,  and  is  occasionally  sacrificed  to  the  blind  impulse  of  passion. 

In  the  evening  I  had  a  visit  from  Mr.  C and  Mr.  B ,  who 

officiates  to-morrow  at  our  small  island  church.  The  conversation  I  had 
with  these  gentlemen  was  sad  enough.  They  seem  good,  and  kind,  and 
amiable  men,  and  I  have  no  doubt  are  conscientious  in  their  capacity  of 
slaveholders;  but  to  one  who  has  lived  outside  this  dreadful  atmosphere, 
the  whole  tone  of  their  discourse  has  a  morally  muffled  sound,  which  one 

must  hear  to  be  able  to  conceive.     Mr.  B told  me  that  the  people  on 

this  plantation  not  going  to  church  was  the  result  of  a  positive  order  from 

Mr.  K ,  who  had  peremptorily  forbidden  their  doing  so,  and,  of  course, 

to  have  infringed  that  order  would  have  been  to  incur  severe  corporal 

chastisement.     Bishop  B ,  it  seems,  had  advised  that  there  should  be 

periodical  preaching  on   the   plantations,  which,  said   Mr.  B ,  would 

have  obviated  any  necessity  for  the  people  of  different  estates  congregating 
at  any  given  point  at  stated  times,  which  might  perhaps  be  objectionable, 
and  at  the  same  time  would  meet  the  reproach  which  was  now  beginning 
to  be  directed  toward  Southern  planters  as  a  class,  of  neglecting  the  eternal 

interest  of  their  dependents.    But  Mr.  K had  equally  objected  to  this. 

He  seems  to  have  held  religious  teaching  a  mighty  dangerous  thing — and 
how  right  he  was  !  I  have  met  with  conventional  cowardice  of  various 
shades  and  shapes  in  various  societies  that  I  have  lived  in,  but  anything 
like  the  pervading  timidity  of  tone  which  I  find  here  on  all  subjects,  but, 
above  all,  on  that  of  the  condition  of  the  slaves,  I  have  never  dreamed  of. 
Truly  slavery  begets  slavery,  and  the  perpetual  state  of  suspicion  and  ap 
prehension  of  the  slaveholders  is  a  very  handsome  offset,  to  say  the  least 
of  it,  against  the  fetters  and  the  lash  of  the  slaves.  Poor  people,  one  and 
all,  but  especially  poor  oppressors  of  the  oppressed  !  The  attitude  of  these 
men  is  really  pitiable;  they  profess  (perhaps  some  of  them  strive  to  do  so 
indeed)  to  consult  the  best  interests  of  their  slaves,  and  yet  shrink  back 
terrified  from  the  approach  of  the  slightest  intellectual  or  moral  improve 
ment  which  might  modify  their  degraded  and  miserable  existence.  I  do 
pity  these  deplorable  servants  of  two  masters  more  than  any  human  beings 
I  have  ever  seen — -more  than  their  own  slaves  a  thousand  times ! 

I  asked  him  several  questions  about  some  of  the  slaves  who  had  managed 


27 

to  learn  to  read,  and  by  what  means  they  had  been  able  to  do  so.  As 
teaching  them  is  strictly  prohibited  by  the  laws,  they  who  instructed  them, 
and  such  of  them  as  acquired  the  knowledge,  must  have  been  not  a  little 
determined  and  persevering.  This  was  my  view  of  the  case,  of  course, 
and  of  course  it  was  not  the  overseer's.  I  asked  him  if  many  of  Mr. 

's  slaves  could  read.     He  said,  "  NQ  ;  very  few,  he  was  happy  to  say, 

but  those  few  were  just  so  many  too  many."  "  Why,  had  he  observed  any 
insubordination  in  those  who  did  ?"  And  I  reminded  him  of  Cooper 
London,  the  Methodist  preacher,  whose  performance  of  the  burial  service 
had  struck  me  so  much  some  time  ago,  to  whose  exemplary  conduct  and 
character  there  is  but  one  concurrent  testimony  all  over  the  plantation. 
No ;  he  had  no  special  complaint  to  bring  against  the  lettered  members  of 
his  subject  community,  but  he  spoke  by  anticipation.  Every  step  they 
take  towards  intelligence  and  enlightenment,  lessens  the  probability  of 
their  acquiescing  in  their  condition.  Their  condition  is  not  to  be  changed, 
— ergo,  they  had  better  not  learn  to  read  ;  a  very  succinct  and  satisfactory 
argument  as  far  as  it  goes,  no  doubt,  and  one  to  which  I  had  not  a  word 

to  reply,  at  any  rate,  to  Mr.  0 ,  as  I  did  not  feel  called  upon  to  discuss 

the  abstract  justice  or  equity  of  the  matter  with  him.  Indeed,  he,  to  a 
certain  degree,  gave  up  that  part  of  the  position,  starting  with  "  I  don't 
say  whether  it  is  right  or  wrong  ;"  and  in  all  conversations  that  I  have  had 
with  the  Southerners  upon  these  subjects,  whether  out  of  civility  to  what 
may  be  supposed  to  be  an  Englishwoman's  prejudices,  or  a  forlorn  respect 
to  their  own  convictions,  the  question  of  the  fundamental  wrong  of  Slavery 
is  generally  admitted,  or  at  any  rate,  certainly  never  denied.  That  part 
of  the  subject  is  summarily  dismissed,  and  all  its  other  aspects  vindicated, 
excused,  and  even  lauded  with  untiring  eloquence.  Of  course,  of  the  ab 
stract  question  I  could  judge  before  I  came  here,  but  I  confess  I  had  not 
the  remotest  idea  how  absolutely  iny  observation-  of  every  detail  of  the 
system,  as  a  practical  iniquity,  would  go  to  confirm  my  opinion  of  its 

abomination.     Mr.  0 went  on  to  condemn  and  utterly  denounce  all 

the  preaching,  and  teaching,  and  moral  instruction  upon  religious  subjects 
which  people  in  the  South,  pressed  upon  by  Northern  opinion,  are  endea 
voring  to  give  their  slaves.  The  kinder  and  the  more  cowardly  masters 
are  anxious  to  evade  the  charge  of  keeping  their  negroes  in  brutish  igno 
rance,  and  so  they  crumble  what  they  suppose  and  hope  may  prove  a  little 
harmless  religious  enlightenment,  which,  mixed  up  with  much  religious 
authority  on  the  subject  of  submission  and  fidelity  to  masters,  they  trust 
their  slaves  may  swallow  without  its  doing  them  any  harm, — i.  e.,  that 
they  may  be  better  Christians  and  better  slaves, — and  so,  indeed,  no  doubt 

they  are  ;  but  it  is  a  very  dangerous  experiment,  and  from  Mr.  0 's 

point  of  view,  I  quite  agree  with  him.  The  letting  out  of  water,  or  the 
letting  in  of  light,  in  infinitesimal  quantities,  is  not  always  easy.  The 


28 

half-wicked  of  the  earth  are  the  leaks  through  which  wickedness  is  even 
tually  swamped  ;  compromises  forerun  absolute  surrender  in  most  matters, 
and  fools  and  cowards  are,  in  such  cases,  the  instruments  of  Providence 

for  their  own  defeat.     Mr.  O stated  unequivocally  his  opinion  that 

free  labor  would  be  more  profitable  on  the  plantations  than  the  work  of 
slaves,  which,  being  compulsory,  was  of  the  worst  possible  quality  and  the 
smallest  possible  quantity ;  then  the  charge  of  them  before  and  after  they 
are  able  to  work  is  onerous,  the  cost  of  feeding  and  clothing  them  very 
considerable,  and  upon  the  whole,  he,  a  Southern  overseer,  pronounced 
himself  decidedly  in  favor  of  free  labor,  upon  grounds  of  expediency. 
Having  at  the  beginning  of  our  conversation  declined  discussing  the  moral 
aspect  of  Slavery,  evidently  not  thinking  that  position  tenable,  I  thought 
I  had  every  right  to  consider  Mr. 'a  slave-driver  a  decided  Aboli 
tionist. 

After  the  departure  of  this  poor  woman,  I  walked  down  the  settlement 
toward  the  infirmary  or  hospital,  calling  in  at  one  or  two  of  the  houses 
along  the  row.  These  cabins  consist  of  one  room,  about  twelve  feet  by 
fifteen,  with  a  couple  of  closets  smaller  and  closer  than  the  state-rooms  of 
a  ship,  divided  off  from  the  main  room  and  each  other  by  rough  wooden 
partitions,  in  which  the  inhabitants  sleep.  They  have  almost  all  of  them 
a  rude  bedstead,  with  the  gray  moss  of  the  forests  for  mattress,  and  filthy, 
pestilential-looking  blankets  for  covering.  Two  families  (sometimes  eight 
and  ten  in  number)  reside  in  one  of  these  huts,  which  are  mere  wooden 
frames  pinned,  as  it  were,  to  the  earth  by  a  brick  chimney  outside,  whose 
enormous  aperture  within  pours  down  a  flood  of  air,  but  little  counteracted 
by  the  miserable  spark  of  fire,  which  hardly  sends  an  attenuated  thread  of 
lingering  smoke  up  its  huge  throat.  A  wide  ditch  runs  immediately  at 
the  back  of  these  dwellings,  which  is  filled  and  emptied  daily  by  the  tide. 
Attached  to  each  hovel  is  a  small  scrap  of  ground  for  a  garden,  which, 
however,  is  for  the  most  part  untended  and  uncultivated.  Such  of  these 
dwellings  as  I  visited  to-day  were  filthy  and  wretched  in  the  extreme,  and 
exhibited  that  most  deplorable  consequence  of  ignorance  and  an  abject 
condition,  the  inability  of  the  inhabitants  to  secure  and  improve  even  such 
pitiful  comfort  as  might  yet  be  achieved  by  them.  Instead  of  the  order, 
neatness,  and  ingenuity  which  might  convert  even  these  miserable  hovels 
into  tolerable  residences,  there  was  the  careless,  reckless,  filthy  indolence, 
which  even  the  brutes  do  not  exhibit  in  their  lairs  and  nests,  and  which 
seemed  incapable  of  applying  to  the  uses  of  existence  the  few  miserable 
means  of  comfort  yet  within  their  reach.  Firewood  and  shavings  lay 
littered  about  the  floors,  while  the  half-naked  children  were  cowering 
round  two  or  three  smouldering  cinders.  The  moss,  with  which  the 
chinks  and  crannies  of  their  ill-protecting  dwellings  might  have  been 


29 

stuffed,  was  trailing  in  dirt  and  dust  about  the  ground,  while  the  back 
door  of  the  huts,  opening  upon  a  most  unsightly  ditch,  was  left  wide  open 
for  the  fowls  and  ducks,  which  they  are  allowed  to  raise,  to  travel  in  and 
out,  increasing  the  filth  of  the  cabin  by  what  they  brought  and  left  in 
every  direction.  In  the  midst  of  the  floor,  or  squatting  round  the  cold 
hearth,  would  be  four  or  five  little  children  from  four  to  ten  years  old,  the 
latter  all  with  babies  in  their  arms,  the  care  of  the  infants  being  taken 
from  the  mothers  (who  are  driven  afield  as  soon  as  they  recover  from  child 
labor),  and  devolved  upon  these  poor  little  nurses,  as  they  are  called,  whose 
business  it  is  to  watch  the  infant,  and  carry  it  to  its  mother  whenever  it 
may  require  nourishment.  To  these  hardly  human  little  beings  I  ad 
dressed  my  remonstrances  about  the  filth,  cold,  and  unnecessary  wretched 
ness  of  their  room,  bidding  the  elder  boys  and  girls  kindle  up  the  fire, 
sweep  the  floor,  and  expel  the  poultry.  For  a  long  time  my  very  words 
seemed  unintelligible  to  them,  till,  when  I  began  to  sweep  and  make  up 
the  fire,  etc.,  they  first  fell  to  laughing,  and  then  imitating  me.  The  in 
crustations  of  dirt  on  their  hands,  feet,  and  faces,  were  my  next  object  of 
attack,  and  the  stupid  negro  practice  (by-the-by,  but  a  short  time  since 
nearly  universal  in  enlightened  Europe)  of  keeping  the  babies  with  their 
feet  bare,  and  their  heads,  already  well  capped  by  nature  with  their  woolly 
hair,  wrapped  in  half  a  dozen  hot,  filthy  coverings.  Thus  I  travelled  down 
the  "  street/'  in  every  dwelling  endeavoring  to  awaken  a  new  perception, 
that  of  cleanliness,  sighing,  as  I  went,  over  the  futility  of  my  own  exer 
tions,  for  how  can  slaves  be  improved  ?  Nathless,  thought  I,  let  what  can 
be  done;  for  it  may  be  that,  the  two  being  incompatible,  improvement  may 
yet  expel  Slavery;  and  so  it  might,  and  surely  would,  if,  instead  of  begin 
ning  at  the  end,  I  could  but  begin  at  the  beginning  of  my  task.  If  the 
mind  and  soul  were  awakened,  instead  of  mere  physical  good  attempted, 
the  physical  good  would  result,  and  the  great  curse  vanish  away  ;  but  my 
hands  are  tied  fast,  and  this  corner  of  the  work  is  all  that  I  may  do.  Yet 
it  can  not  be  but,  from  my  words  and  actions,  some  revelations  should 
reach  these  poor  people ;  and  going  in  and  out  among  them  perpetually,  I 
shall  teach,  and  they  learn  involuntarily  a  thousand  things  of  deepest  im 
port.  They  must  learn,  and  who  can  tell  the  fruit  of  that  knowledge 
alone,  that  there  are  beings  in  the  world,  even  with  skins  of  a  different 
color  from  their  own,  who  have  sympathy  for  their  misfortunes,  love  for 
their  virtues,  and  respect  for  their  common  nature — but  oh  !  my  heart  is 
full  almost  to  bursting  as  I  walk  among  these  most  poor  creatures. 

The  infirmary  is  a  large  two-story  building,  terminating  the  broad 
orange-planted  space  between  the  two  rows  of  houses  which  form  the  first 
settlement ;  it  is  built  of  whitewashed  wood,  and  contains  four  large-sized 
rooms.  But  how  shall  I  describe  to  you  the  spectacle  which  was  pre 
sented  to  me  on  entering  the  first  of  these  ?  But  half  the  casements,  of 


30 

which  there  were  six,  were  glazed,  and  these  were  obscured  with  dirt, 
almost  as  much  as  the  other  windowless  ones  were  darkened  by  the  dingy 
shutters,  which  the  shivering  inmates  had  fastened  to  in  order  to  protect 
themselves  from  the  cold.  In  the  enormous  chimney  glimmered  the 
powerless  embers  of  a  few  sticks  of  wood,  round  which,  however,  as  many 
of  the  sick  women  as  could  approach  were  cowering,  some  on  wooden 
settles,  most  of  them  on  the  ground,  excluding  those  who  were  too  ill  to 
rise;  and  these  last  poor  wretches  lay  prostrate  on  the  floor,  without  bed, 
mattress,  or  pillow,  buried  in  tattered  and  filthy  blankets,  which, 'huddled 
round  them  as  they  lay  strewed  about,  left  hardly  space  to  move  upon  the 
floor.  And  here,  in  their  hour  of  sickness  and  suffering,  lay  those  whose 
health  and  strength  are  spent  in  unrequited  labor  for  us — those  who, 
perhaps  even  yesterday,  were  being  urged  on  to  their  unpaid  task — 
those  whose  husbands,  fathers,  brothers,  and  sons  were  even  at  that 
hour  sweating  over  the  earth,  whose  produce  was  to  buy  for  us  all 
the  luxuries  which  health  can  revel  in,  all  the  comforts  which  can  alle 
viate  sickness.  I  stood  in  the  midst  of  them,  perfectly  unable  to  speak, 
the  tears  pouring  from  my  eyes  at  this  sad  spectacle  of  their  misery, 
myself  and  my  emotion  alike  strange  and  incomprehensible  to  them. 
Here  lay  women  expecting  every  hour  the  terrors  and  agonies  of  childbirth, 
others  who  had  just  brought  their  doomed  offspring  into  the  world,  others 
who  were  groaning  over  the  anguish  and  bitter  disappointment  of  miscar 
riages — here  lay  some  burning  with  fever,  others  chilled  with  cold  and 
aching  with  rheumatism,  upon  the  hard  cold  ground,  the  draughts  and 
dampness  of  the  atmosphere  increasing  their  sufferings,  and  dirt,  noise, 
and  stench,  and  every  aggravation  of  which  sickness  is  capable,  combined 
in  their  condition — here  they  lay  like  brute  beasts,  absorbed  in  physical 
suffering;  unvisited  by  any  of  those  Divine  influences  which  may  ennoble 
the  dispensations  of  pain  and  illness,  forsaken,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  of  all 
good;  and  yet,  0  God,  Thou  surely  hadst  not  forsaken  them!  Now  pray 
take  notice  that  this  is  the  hospital  of  an  estate  where  the  owners  are  sup 
posed  to  be  humane,  the  overseer  efficient  and  kind,  and  the  negroes  re 
markably  well  cared  for  and  comfortable.  As  soon  as  I  recovered  from 
my  dismay,  I  addressed  old  Hose  the  midwife,  who  had  charge  of  this 
room,  bidding  her  open  the  shutters  of  such  windows  as  were  glazed,  and 
let  in  the  light.  I  next  proceeded  to  make  up  the  fire;  but,  upon  my 
lifting  a  log  for  that  purpose,  there  was  one  universal  outcry  of  horror,  and 
old  Rose,  attempting  to  snatch  it  from  me,  exclaimed,  "  Let  alone,  missis — 
let  be  ;  what  for  you  lift  wood  ?  you  have  nigger  enough,  missis,  to  do  it !" 
I  hereupon  had  to  explain  to  them  my  view  of  the  purposes  for  which 
hands  and  arms  were  appended  to  our  bodies,  and  forthwith  began  making 
Rose  tidy  up  the  miserable  apartment,  removing  all  the  filth  and  rubbish 
from  the  floor  that  could  be  removed,  folding  up  in  piles  the  blankets  of 


31 

the  patients  who  were  not  using  them,  and  placing,  in  rather  more 
sheltered  and  comfortable  positions,  those  who  were  unable  to  rise.  It  was 
all  that  I  could  do,  and  having  enforced  upon  them  all  my  earnest  desire 
that  they  should  keep  their  room  swept,  and  as  tidy  as  possible,  I  passed 
on  to  the  other  room  on  the  ground  floor,  and  to  the  two  above,  one  of 
which  is  appropriated  to  the  use  of  the  men  who  are  ill.  They  were  all  in 
the  same  deplorable  condition,  the  upper  rooms  being  rather  the  more 
miserable,  inasmuch  as  none  of  the  windows  were  glazed  at  all,  and  they 
had,  therefore,  only  the  alternative  of  utter  darkness,  or  killing  draughts 
of  air  from  the  unsheltered  casements.  In  all,  filth,  disorder,  and  misery 
abounded,  the  floor  was  the  only  bed,  and  scanty  begrimed  rags  of  blankets 

the  only  covering.     I  left  this  refuge  for  Mr. 's  sick  dependents  with 

my  clothes  covered  with  dust,  and  full  of  vermin,  and  with  a  heart  heavy 
enough,  as  you  will  well  believe.  My  morning's  work  had  fatigued  me 
not  a  little,  and  I  was  glad  to  return  to  the  house,  where  I  gave  vent  to 

my  indignation  and  regret  at  the  scene  I  had  just  witnessed  to  Mr. 

and  his  overseer,  who,  here,  is  a  member  of  our  family.  The  latter  told 
me  that  the  condition  of  the  hospital  had  appeared  to  him,  from  his  firs't 
entering  upon  his  situation  (only  within  the  last  year),  to  require  a  reform, 

and  that  he  had  proposed  it  to  the  former  manager,  Mr.  K ,  and 

Mr. 's  brother,  who  is  part  proprietor  of  the  estate,  but,  receiving  no 

encouragement  from  them,  had  supposed  that  it  was  a  matter  of  indiffer 
ence  to  the  owners,  and  had  left  it  in  the  condition  in  which  he  had  found 
it,  in  which  condition  it  has  been  for  the  last  nineteen  years  and  upward. 

I  have  been  interrupted  by  several  visits,  my  dear  E ,  among  other, 

one  from  a  poor  creature  called  Judy,  whose  sad  story  and  condition  affected 
me  most  painfully.  She  had  been  married,  she  said,  some  years  ago  to 
one  of  the  men  called  Temba,  who,  however,  now  has  another  wife,  having 
left  her  because  she  went  mad.  While  out  of  her  mind  she  escaped  into 
the  jungle,  and  contrived  to  secrete  herself  there  for  some  time,  but  was 
finally  tracked  and  caught,  and  brought  back  and  punished  by  being  made 
to  sit,  day  after  day,  for  hours  in  the  stocks, — a  severe  punishment  for  a 
man,  but  for  a  woman  perfectly  barbarous.  She  complained  of  chronic 
rheumatism,  and  other  terrible  ailments,  and  said  she  suffered  such  in 
tolerable  pain  while  laboring  in  the  fields,  that  she  had  come  to  entreat 
me  to  have  her  work  lightened.  She  could  hardly  crawl,  and  cried  bit 
terly  all  the  time  she  spoke  to  me. 

She  told  me  a  miserable  story  of  her  former  experienoe  on  the  planta 
tion  under  Mr.  K 's  overseership.  It  seems  that  Jem  Valiant  (an 

extremely  difficult  subject,  a  mulatto  lad,  whose  valor  is  sufficiently 
accounted  for  now  by  the  influence  of  the  mutinous  white  blood)  was  her 


32 

first-born,  the  son  of  Mr.  K ,  who  forced  her,  flogged  her  severely  for 

having  resisted  him,  and  then  sent  her  off,  as  a  farther  punishment,  to 
Five  Pound — a  horrible  swamp  in  a  remote  corner  of  the  estate,  to  which 
the  slaves  are  sometimes  banished  for  such  offences  as  are  not  sufficiently 
atoned  for  by  the  lash.  The  dismal  loneliness  of  the  place  to  these  poor 
people,  who  are  as  dependent  as  children  upon  companionship  and  sympa 
thy,  makes  this  solitary  exile  a  rnuch-dreaded  infliction  ;  and  this  poor  crea 
ture  said  that,  bad  as  the  flogging  was,  she  would  sooner  have  taken  that 
again  than  the  dreadful  lonely  days  and  nights  she  spent  on  the  penal 
swamp  of  Five  Pound. 

I  make  no  comment  on  these  terrible  stories,  my  dear  friend,  and  tell 
them  to  you  as  nearly  as  possible  in  the  perfectly  plain,  unvarnished  man 
ner  in  which  they  are  told  to  me.  I  do  riot  wish  to  add  to,  or  perhaps  I 
ought  to  say  take  away  from,  the  effect  of  such  narrations  by  amplifying 
the  simple  horror  and  misery  of  their  bare  details. 

Another  of  my  visitors  had  a  still  more  dismal  story  to  tell ;  her  name 
was  Die  ;  she  had  had  sixteen  children,  fourteen  of  whom  were  dead  ;  she 
had  had  four  miscarriages  :  one  had  been  caused  with  falling  down  with  a 
very  heavy  burden  on  her  head,  and  one  from  having  her  arms  strained  up 
to  be  lashed.  I  asked  her  what  she  meant  by  having  her  arms  tied  up. 
She  said  their  hands  were  first  tied  together,  sometimes  by  the  wrists,  and 
sometimes,  which  was  worse,  by  the  thumbs,  and  they  were  then  drawn 
up  to  a  tree  or  post,  so  as  almost  to  swing  them  off  the  ground,  and  ^then 
their  clothes  rolled  round  their  waist,  and  a  man  with  a  cowhide  stands 
and  stripes  them.  I  give  you  the  woman's  words.  Sbe  did  not  speak  of 
this  as  of  anything  strange,  unusual  or  especially  horrid  and  abominable  ; 
and  when  I  said,  "  Did  they  do  that  to  you  when  you  were  with  child  ?" 
she  simply  replied,  "  Yes,  missis/'  And  to  all  this  I  listen — I,  an  Eng 
lishwoman,  the  wife  of  the  man  who  owns  these  wretches,  and  I  cannot 
say,  "  This  thing  shall  not  be  done  again ;  that  cruel  shame  and 
villainy  shall  never  be  known  here  again."  I  gave  the  woman  meat  and 
flannel,  which  were  what  she  came  to  ask  for,  and  remained  choking  with 
indignation  and  grief  long  after  they  had  all  left  me  to  my  most  bitter 
thoughts. 

I  went  out  to  try  and  walk  off  some  of  the  weight  of  horror  and  de 
pression  which  I  am  beginning  to  feel  daily  more  and  more,  surrounded 
by  all  this  misery  and  degradation  that  I  can  neither  help  nor  hinder. 


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